Help - Unable to partition drive

It says the verification of the partition map failed. So this indicates that the hard drive has serious errors which must be repaired first.

Allan

I am not talking about verifying and repairing permissions.

What you need to do is boot from the install DVD for your Mac and run Disk Utility from there to repair the disk.

Allan

rayray519 wrote:

Just looking for a good guide on installing Ubuntu Linux now on 4,1 Mac Mini.

Well glad I caught you.

You first need to install rEFIt and reboot twice to load into EFI, it hasn't been updated in awhile, but luckily your not on 10.6 so it doesn't matter.

If you install Ubuntu on Mac without rEFIt, it corrupts your MBR section of your Mac's GUID Partition Map as it thinks it's a PC. Also installs the Linux swap partition into your EFI partition, **** of a mess to fix.

So once rEFIt is installed, you can install Linux.

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

http://lifehacker.com/5531037/how-to-triple+boot-your-mac-with-windows-and-linux -no-boot-camp-required

However that link is for a older version of Ubuntu, 10.04, which if you follow the Linux instructions and create the Linux swap and OS partitions, then the install will go fine, you can upgrade from within Linux.

Problem is Ubuntu and Unity which not many people like and likely untested on Mac's. So your pretty much stuck using a older version. Or forage ahead on your own perhaps with assistance from Linux community.

A much BETTER solution is to virtualize Linux in a window on OS X Using Virtualbox (free), VMFusion or Parallels Desktop, this way you can try different distros, even run several at once. 🙂

http://distrowatch.com/

Once you've found the one you want (most are going for Linux Mint now, 10.10 can be themed to look like OS X and updated to 11, however not Linux 12)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxODltR8IZY

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/326

Lot's of choice in desktop UI on Linux, lots of distros to chose from too with the Gnome 2 desktop.

Just note that under virtualization, one doesn't get as much 3D UI perfromance as a direct install.

Problem is getting drivers.

http://mac.linux.be/content/apple-intel-wiki

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages

All I can say is you'll get it installed easier with older versions of Linux than newer ones or Lion Mac's.

Once Lion came out it seemed interest in running Linux on Mac's disappeared, and that's a problem because Linux on Mac is a nitch of a 10% market share, so it's really tiny and you need so much help unless your a coder.

So I would go with virtualization first, until you learn more about what works and doesn't, what you want in your distro and then install it into a partition, done wrong can mess up the machine and leave you offline, unless you got another machine.

Installing Linux on a Mac is by far the hardest geek thing possible, a run of the mill PC is better for first time installers.

It could be that later Linux versions can accept a GUID EFI Mac, you just have to research some more. I've gone mostly to virtualization, not much in Linux or computers in general interest me much as it used too.

Going by this page, you can see 10.10 and 11.11 is progressing slowly on older hardware

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DualBoot/MacOSX

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DualBoot/MacOSX

good Luck. 🙂

Here is two guides for your 4.1

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Macmini4-1/Lucid

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Macmini4-1/Maverick

10.10 is as far as it goes, no Unity.

Looks like 10.10 is your best choice at the moment which works well with the 10.04 guide link from Lifehacker (install then upgrade) and theme with Macbutntu on Linux Mint 10.10.

So 10.10 Ubuntu is the limit. Linux Mint is the easiest to install and has all the "stuff" on the DVD install version, then theme to Macbuntu 10.10, then update to perhaps Linux Mint 11 and that's about it. May work.

Hope that assists, good luck figuring it all out and playing around. 🙂