rEFIt / Support Requests / #116 can't create/use refit cd on 10-5-8

joevt - 2013-03-24

Install instructions at http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s1_install.html

You don't need to make a CD to install rEFIt. Just double click the dmg file and it should automatically mount as a disk called "rEFIt".

If right-click doesn't work, try pressing the control key and clicking. Or change the mouse settings in System Preferences so the right button is set to Secondary Button.

Disk Utility should have a Burn button. Select the rEFIt-0.14.dmg item in the Disk Utility window, then click the Burn button.

Which Boot menu are you looking at? Try holding the Option key during startup to get the Startup Manager.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310

Note: rEFIt isn't supported anymore. Try rEFInd.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

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iain - 2013-03-25

Thanks for your help
Maybe the main problem is that I'm not familiar with the Mac.

I can get the rEFIt disk image loaded - I'm just not sure yet how to use it (carry on reading documentation)

The right hand mouse option was not set to 'Secondary Button' it is now.

I still can't find a 'Burn' button on Disk Utility screen (see attached file) - do you mean 'Images- Burn' on top menu. If so I've tried that (3 times) and it burns an image ...

...but when I try to run Startup Manager (using Option (alt) key) it only shows the 'Imac' option - no CD.

I'm looking at rEFInd and will carry on my quest to get Linux running on iMac hardware. I'm taking it slowly as I don't want to risk damaging the Mac system in the attempt.

thanks again
Iain

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iain - 2013-03-25

refit_scren.tiff

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joevt - 2013-03-25

You're using an older version of Disk Utility so I'm not 100% sure - is there a "Show Toolbar" option in the Window menu? Anyway, the Images-> Burn... menu item should be the correct item. Perhaps it's not creating a bootable CD.

You can try checking the CD by opening Terminal.app and typing the following (without the quotes and don't press return yet):
"bless -info "

Then drag the CD (or any other disk you want to check) to the terminal.app window so that the volume path is automatically added to the command line, so that it appears something like this:
bless -info /Volumes/rEFIt

The results will look something like this:
finderinfo[0]: 35 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/rEFIt/efi/refit
finderinfo[1]: 62 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/rEFIt/efi/refit/refit.efi
finderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]: 0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]: 35 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/rEFIt/efi/refit

The above is information stored in the HFS file system of the disk. It says that booting that disk will boot the refit.efi file. If you do "bless -info /" to get information on your Mac OS X startup volume, you'll see that it is set to boot a file called "/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi"

It's possible that the rEFIt-0.14.dmg is not setup properly to create a bootable CD (I haven't tried it). In that case, you could try the rEFIt-0.14.cdr file instead. It will also mount as a disk image just like the dmg file.

When you clicked "Burn..." did you have the image file "rEFIt-0.14.dmg" selected in Disk Utility or did you have the volume name "rEFIt" selected? That might make a difference. I can try it later when I have a writable CD available.

If you have a 2nd hard drive or an OS X install disk, you can boot from there, use Disk Utility to shrink a partition on the iMac's internal disk, so that you have room for a new partition, then create a new partition just for rEFIt (it doesn't need to be more than 20 MB). You can install rEFIt to the small partition, thus leaving your OS X partition as is, so that both the OS X partition and the rEFIt partition will both appear in the Startup Manager (when you press the option key at startup).

You'll have to do the partition resizing anyway, if you want Linux on your internal hard drive. rEFIt isn't really necessary anyway, if you're only installing one other OS. You could use Boot Camp Assistant to do the partitioning for you - but instead of installing Windows to the new partition, you will install Linux.

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iain - 2013-03-25

Humble Pie Time !
I've contacted the original owner of my system and it's NOT Intel.
It's the last of the PPCs so I can't do what I wanted to do.
But I have learnt a lot about Macs and that's good for me.
Thanks to everyone who made suggestions and I'm sorry if I wasted your time.
Iain

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joevt - 2013-03-26

Right. In 2006, the first Intel Macs came out. The year also had new G5 Macs.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1758?viewlocale=en_US

In the Apple menu, there's an "About This Mac" menu option. It will also describe your hardware (using Apple System Profiler or System Information on later OS's)

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iain - 2013-03-26

Yes - it was staring me in the face. I'd brought up 'About this Mac' and i'd seen 'Power PC' and hadn't appreciated what it meant - I was so convinced that I had an Intel m/c.

Anyhow I have now installed Debian PPC on it and am still learning a lot.
Iain

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can't create/use refit cd on 10-5-8

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#116 can't create/use refit cd on 10-5-8

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