iMac boot from linux partition on external drive

Posted by user74757 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by user74757
Published on 2011-04-03T20:17:18Z Indexed on 2012/09/04 21:41 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 256

Filed under:

linux

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boot

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partitioning

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efi

I have the following "setup:"

iMac (no internal drive/dead) --------- (Firewire) ------- [[MAC OS X]]
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(USB)
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[[MISC STORAGE PARTITION] [MISC STORAGE PARTITION] [EXT2 UBUNTU PARTITION]]

I routinely use the firewire drive to boot MAC OS X.

However, I would like to boot from the linux partition of the USB drive. This linux partition had linux installed on it from a live cd, and during that process, I told the installer to install GRUB on the usb drive (which happened to be /dev/sdd).

My question is, how do I get this disk to show up during the iMac option-boot? Currently, only the firewire MAC OS X option shows up. I have read about rEFIT, but that appears to install it to the Mac OS X disk (would that still work?)...

Also mentioned was installing rEFIT to the internal EFI system partition, but I don't know if that is wise.

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