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iMac i3 running 10.6.8

  1. I've downloaded the 12.0.4 32-bit Intel ubuntu.iso and converted it to ubuntu.img and moved to root.

  2. The "USB for OS X" instructions say insert USB Flash media.

    My flash media is FAT32.

    But, if one were to use Disk Utility to Erase, what format is correct: FAT, ExFAT, Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitivity), or Mac OS Extended?

  3. Found the drive: /dev/disk1 and unmounted OK.

  4. Issued: sudo dd if=/ubuntu.img of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

  5. The copy goes fine, BUT at the end I get a OS X message that The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.

    This is not in the Ubuntu instructions. So, I choose the Ignore option.

  6. Issued: diskutil eject /dev/disk1 and restart with Option held down.

    No USB drive shows up to boot from. Eventually I get an "Unrecognized Disk" error. I'm not surprised because my memory is that to get a bootable drive for a Mac requires some version of the correct OS X to be on the disk.

    Yet, the folks who wrote these instructions would certainly know this fact -- yet their instructions don't work.

ElefantPhace
  • 3,281
DVC
  • 119

2 Answers2

2

Spent half the day on this but finally have a solution: The application unetbootin will quite happily open up the iso file, extract everything and create a bootable USB stick.

Select your distribution and version

Duncanmoo
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-3

I'm actually not surprised Ubuntu's instructions don't work for creating a bootbale USB for Mac. I thought about it some more and eventually figured out that these instructions were to create the bootable drive if you're using a Mac computer, and I know this because in Disk Utility, my 4 gigabyte Verbatim USB flash drive is formatted as MS DOS (FAT) with a partitioning map scheme of Master Boot Record which is not recognized as boot media under OS X. So in short, the instructions are severely misleading, because any Mac user would likely assume these instructions would be for creating the bootable media to work with OS X, but it'd only work with Windows. What gives it away even more is Ubuntu's lack of regards for making the USB bootable through your operating system's native partitioning program, ergo, Disk Utility or Computer Management for Windows users. At first I thought it was because they made the assumption you would know how to make the drive bootable (I didn't) but then I figured out why the guide was sorely lacking... Terminal does all the work for you. So I've since given up in making my USB bootable, it's clear that Mac computers are very closed sourced as far as software and hardware goes, Linux was always meant for PC computers, not Macs.

Bobby
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