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I have a beautiful 27" iMac. I would like to run Ubuntu on it natively, dual-booting with OS X.

I have rEFIt installed, and I can boot into the Ubuntu 10.10 CD, kind of. Here's what happens:

  1. I select the CD from the rEFIt menu
  2. It loads for a while, then flashes up an aubergine screen with a very low-res picture of a human, an arrow and a keyboard
  3. It sits there for a while
  4. It changes to 80x25 console mode
  5. The screen then goes black, as if nothing is displaying to it

All the while, the CD is churning away as if something is reading from it.

What do I do?

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  • I know this is an old post, but you can't use a wireless keyboard (the default for new iMacs). You need to get a plain old wired keyboard. The bluetooth daemon doesn't run until the desktop is loaded, so the loader fails because you don't have a keyboard. May 30, 2013 at 3:45

3 Answers 3

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Try pressing a key at the aubergine screen, then hitting F6 and then Escape to edit boot options. Remove "quiet" (and "splash" in the case of the desktop CD) and see if you get some more information that way.

Which architecture are you using? If amd64, try either i386 or amd64+mac instead.

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  • Tried all of these. Didn't work. Problem persists in 11.04. Suspect that genix is on the right track.
    – jml
    Jul 7, 2011 at 11:27
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On imac 27 the output is going to the display port So unless you have a monitor plugged into that You won't see anything this happened to me when Installing ubuntu

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  • I haven't been able to verify this, since I don't have the right dongle (and it's a bit of a pain borrowing my flatmate's external monitor).
    – jml
    Jul 7, 2011 at 11:26
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Try downloading the alternative install cd. It will do the same thing but the install will be in console mode. I don't have your hardware but I've gotten around some pesky driver issues that way. Once the system is installed you should be able to boot into it just fine. My experience has been issues with the default video driver or a goofy mass storage system I'm playing with.

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  • Tried this. Didn't work. Haven't retried with alternative install on 11.04
    – jml
    Jul 7, 2011 at 11:26

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