No bootable device error after reinstall "Ubuntu Live CD" on HDD partition on MacBook Pro 3,1

[Shikuna Vand]

My Linux live CD partition will not boot from rEFInd with a "no bootable device found" error message. I am not sure this is a rEFInd issue, but I have not found anything relevant to my situation on internet. As a newcomer to the Linux have little knowledge of bootloaders and such. Please read below to follow, how I got to this point.
Help: Short from erasing the entire drive and starting again, does anyone have any tips or fixes I can try?

To learn more about linux, I tried to install Ubuntu in double booting mode on an old MacBook Pro 3,1 - Late 2007. After the initial successful install from the Live CD, I realised I had applied an erroneous partitioning scheme. So I deleted the live CD and Ubuntu partitions and repartitioned the remaining space anew. Now the newly installed Live CD partition will not boot from rEFInd with a "no bootable device found" error message. OSX still launches reliably.

After much research -the pages on how to double boot MacBook Airs were the most useful - the initial set up that worked from me was:
- partition the drive using DiskUtility into an OSX [HFS+], Live CD [FAT] and Linux Partition [FAT] Volume
- install rEFInd in mac osx partition
- use unetbootin to install the Ubuntu 10.10.iso into the live CD partition

gdisk provides this overview:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.6

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Comments:
- Due to a fluke the initial partition scheme was: /boot 10 GB, swap 8 GB, /home 4 GB, /ubuntu 30GB. I decided to start anew with a more reasonable scheme
- I deleted the previous Linux partitions [FAT] and repartitioned to reinstall the live CD iso
- I suspect I made have made the MBR protective, when trying to sync the partitions and in the trial and error attempts to diagnose the problem

I am grateful if anyone helps me with this.

[Roderick W. Smith]

You may just need to create a new hybrid MBR with gdisk. Be sure to include both your Linux partitions in the hybrid MBR, and then see what rEFInd does.

More broadly speaking, though, your configuration is very odd. A live CD is not normally installed to a hard disk in the way you've done; it's used to boot to Linux from the CD medium (or from a USB flash drive). This is helpful in case you need to repair a more conventional installation or to try Linux without installing it. If you're going to partition the disk for Linux, it's better to do a regular installation using the standard installer. In that case, I also recommend installing using an EFI boot loader. I wouldn't use anything as old as Ubuntu 10.10, though; grab the latest (13.04), or at least the latest LTS release (12.04.2) and install it. With an EFI filesystem driver for the filesystem you use for Ubuntu, this will enable rEFInd to launch the Linux kernel directly.

[Shikuna Vand]

Hello Rod,

Thanks for your quick reply. I will try the gdisk option. I'll post an update later.

The problem is my Mac Book Pro (MBP) will not boot of USB or an actual "Live CD". Installing the ubuntu iso in its own partition is my only viable option.