Install ubuntu dual boot on older mac mini (2014)

minisaurus

2/21/24, 7:35 PM

Been trying to install 22.04 as dual boot on my old mac mini from 2014. So far I have:

created a bootable usb
installed rEFInd on the mac
divided the main disk into 250 GB for mac and 250 GB is nothing.

I can boot linux from the usb, but when I get to the install bit, I get the message "No other operating systems on the computer"

I did as suggested here: Install ubuntu 18.04 on mac mini 2018

and ran ubiquity -b instead of the standard install; created and formatted the empty disk space as ext4, and did the Something else installation option.

All this completed without error messages, but on booting the mac, I get to the rEFInd launcher, but the only detected os is macos.

Am I missing a crucial step somewhere?

997

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mac

partitioning

dual-boot

uefi

refind

Score:1

Ubuntu

Rod Smith

2/21/24, 9:52 PM

Because you installed rEFInd under macOS before installing Ubuntu, the refind-install script would have detected no Linux partitions, and would therefore have not installed any EFI filesystem drivers. Without those, and without GRUB 2, rEFInd will be unable to detect the Ubuntu installation.

To resolve the problem, you should install the ext4_x64.efi driver file. You can do this as follows (from memory):

Boot macOS.
Open a Terminal window.
Run the mountesp script that comes with rEFInd. This will mount your EFI System Partition (ESP), probably at /Volumes/ESP. (The script should say where it's mounted.)
Copy the ext4_x64.efi file from the rEFInd directory (wherever you unzipped the .zip file) to /Volumes/ESP/EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ (or adjusted for wherever mountesp mounted the ESP).

At this point, you should be able to reboot and rEFInd should detect the Linux kernel(s) from your Ubuntu installation. If you installed in one big ext4fs partition, rEFInd should be able to boot Linux at this point. If you installed using a separate /boot partition (because you used LVM or for any other reason), then instead of highlighting the Ubuntu entry and pressing Enter, you'll need to hit Tab a couple of times and add a root={something} specification, where {something} is an identifier for your root filesystem.

+ 2

minisaurus

2/22/24, 5:58 PM

Thanks, I looked into this; a really great explanation; unfortunately, I don’t have `drivers_x64` directory; but I have `ext4_x64.efi` is in the `refind` directory. Should I create drivers_x64 and copy ext4_x64.efi into it maybe?

Rod Smith

2/23/24, 11:45 PM

Yes, put `ext4_x64.efi` in the `EFI\refind\drivers_x64` directory.

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