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Re: Installation, Debian 12, iMac G5, USB thumb drive => “Your installation media couldn’t be mounted. “



Thank you, Paul.

I went back and made the "do it all for me" selection (can't remember its name right now), and it worked perfectly. Thank you!

Here are the results:


joe@debian1:~$
joe@debian1:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            881M     0  881M   0% /dev
tmpfs           193M  860K  192M   1% /run
/dev/sda3        71G  4.3G   63G   7% /
tmpfs           963M     0  963M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           1.0M     0  1.0M   0% /run/credentials/systemd-journald.service
/dev/sda2       245M   13M  233M   5% /boot/grub
tmpfs           963M  4.0K  963M   1% /tmp
tmpfs           1.0M     0  1.0M   0% /run/credentials/getty@tty1.service
tmpfs           193M   56K  193M   1% /run/user/105
tmpfs           193M   52K  193M   1% /run/user/1000
joe@debian1:~$


joe@debian1:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for joe:
Disk /dev/sda: 74.53 GiB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD800JD-40GB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
joe@debian1:~$


joe@debian1:~$ parted -l
-bash: parted: command not found
joe@debian1:~$ parted
-bash: parted: command not found
joe@debian1:~$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA WDC WD800JD-40GB (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: mac
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name      Flags
 1      512B    32.8kB  32.3kB                  Apple
 2      32.8kB  256MB   256MB   hfs             untitled
 3      256MB   78.1GB  77.8GB  ext4            untitled
 4      78.1GB  80.0GB  1973MB  linux-swap(v1)  swap      swap


joe@debian1:~$



On Fri, Aug 29, 2025 at 1:25 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
Hello Joe,

On Fri, 2025-08-29 at 00:41 -0400, Joe Flowers wrote:
> The installation seemed to go OK and finish OK, but on restart,
> the iMac will not boot. I get the Mac icon that means bootable
> media cannot be found.
>
> I'm guessing maybe I made a partitioning mistake or a partitioning
> quirk or grub?

Yes, indeed. Your partitioning layout is incompatible with Apple PowerMacs.

> Here is my partitioning setup:
>
> LVM VG vg1, LV lv1 - 398.5 MB Linux device-mapper (linear)
>     #1    398.5 MB    f    ext2    /boot
> LVM VG vg1, LV lv2 - 398.5 MB Linux device-mapper (linear)
>     #1    398.5 MB    f    HFS    /boot/grub
> LVM VG vg1, LV lv3 - 75.2 GB Linux device-mapper (linear)
>     #1    75.2 GB    f    ext4    /
> LVM VG vg1, LV lv4 - 4.0 GB Linux device-mapper (linear)
>     #1    4.0 GB    f    swap    swap
> SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sda) - 80.0 GB ATA WDC WD800J-40GB
>     #1    32.3 kB        Apple  <---------------------------------------- bet this is the problem? I should have deleted this first?

No, that partition is required. You must not delete it.

>     #2    80.0 GB       K    lvm    untitled
>             25.1 kB        FREE SPACE


Your problem is that your partitioning scheme ignores that the firmware
in your iMac requires plain HFS partition for booting and it must be
the second partition after the 32 KB Apple partition.

This means that you cannot just use an LVM setup like this as the firmware
is unable to access the HFS partition this way. You have put your LVM setup
onto a different disk.

And I'm not sure why you created an ext2 partition for /boot. These partitions
were necessary for bootloaders that use blocklists for loading the stage2
bootloader files. That's not the case for GRUB on PowerMac though which accesses
the stage2 bootloader files by reading it directly from the HFS partition.

See: https://web.archive.org/web/20120605171934/https://opensource.apple.com/source/bless/bless-37/README.BOOTING

Adrian

--
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer
`. `'   Physicist
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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