Ubuntu Bootcamp Drivers And Fix

If you you are using OS X Lion which comes with Bootcamp 4.0 you will need to use the Disk Utility.

This information will not work for iMac (11,1 or newer) users installing recent versions of Ubuntu (e.g., Maverick, Precise, Quantal.), for this you may try this guide Ubuntu 12.10 on 2011 imac.

The presence of the bios-grub partition that the Ubuntu installer creates by default (e.g., sda3) causes a conflict that prevents syncing the GPT and MBR partition tables.

Deleting sda3 does not help since grub2 requires that bios-grub partition, nor will it use either sda or sda4 aborting with the error: This GPT partition table has no BIOS boot partition; embedding wont be possible.

So installing Ubuntu with the bios-grub partition fails and installing without it fails.

There are some oddities (see NOTE) that make installation on Mactel different from installation on a PC (but if it were the same, it wouldnt be a Mac, now would it).

In Ubuntu do not try COMPIZ, this will completely mess around Unity and make it necessary to reinstall Ubuntu.

Be aware that it keeps being tricky running Linux on a Macintosh.

Better even, a backup to another system, external disk or cloud (e.g., Mozy) are not subject to partition configuration errors.

When Bootcamp fails or you have strange faults maybe you want to clean up your harddrive.

When erasing the hard drive choose Security Options.

Zero Out Data.

If this is what you plan to do, there are some changes that you can make to your system that will make its operation closer to that of a PC, avoiding some of the special partition considerations detailed in the other installation situations below.

Intel Macs have an EFI instead of a BIOS as in an IBM compatible system.

A different partition table scheme, GPT, is used on the hard drive.

Since the recommended Ubuntu installation methods use the legacy mode of the EFI, it make sense for a single-booter to convert their hard drive to the MBR format.

As an Ubuntu installer developer, I recommend against making this change.

GPT is a fundamentally better partition table format, and is expected to be used more generally in the future MBR partition tables cant cope with disks over 2TB).

Perhaps the author of this recommendation could contact me (cjwatson AT ubuntu.com) to discuss it.

ColinWatson qqq I didnt want to loose this in case Colin wants it back in DGerman qqq You can convert your hard drive partition format with gparted on the Ubuntu LiveCD.

When the boot selector screen comes up, choose to boot from the CD.

Once you get to the Ubuntu desktop, go to System Administration Partition Editor gParted will start.

In the Dialog Box that comes up, heed the large, bold warning at the top, and click the Advanced triangle to enable the option to create a new partition table format.

Make sure to choose msdos for the type of partition table and click Create.

Once your disk has been converted there should be no partitions in gParted.

You can create your custom partition layout here or exit gParted and start the Ubuntu Installer and use its partitioner to do the dirty work.

Ubuntu Bootcamp Drivers And Fix

Proceed through the install as normal Proceed to the documentation for your specific mac version to configure additional drivers and fix any issues.

Dont worry about what format, just make it the size you want for Ubuntu and your swap partition.

Ubuntu Bootcamp For Mac