Installing an EFI bootloader on a non-bootable Lenny install (Intel Mac)?

[Kevin Ponds <kevin.ponds@gmail.com>]

Hi,


I have an Intel Mac that was previously running Ubuntu in a singleboot configuration (no rEFIt installed -- booting with whatever Ubuntu's default boot method is, which appears to be grub with EFI support).

I attempted to migrate over to Lenny over the weekend, not even thinking about whether or not it had stock EFI support.  I tried my standard install method which is to use the netinst CD, tasksel nothing except for the base system, and then pull in what I need with apt when the system boots.

Short version of the story is that after the install and load of grub, it doesn't boot.  I'm under the impression that the stock Lenny install has a version of grub that doesn't support EFI.  Unfortunately, all of the documentation that I can find on how to install Debian on intel macs is written from the perspective of having OSX already installed (and thus being able to set up rEFIt from there).

So what I would like to do now is get this system booting, as it already has Lenny installed on it, I think that getting a bootloader that supports EFI installed and imaged into the MBR (or GUID? don't know a whole lot about EFI, I assume the bootloader will sort this out for me.) will get me there.  I notice that there is a package in Lenny called "grub-efi".

My question is: If I boot from a live CD, chroot into my Lenny install, install grub-efi, and then run grub-update, will I be good?  Will grub.conf or menu.lst changes be required? Is there anything else I have to watch out for?

Is there already any supporting documentation for EFI systems which do not have a bootable OS on them?  If not, maybe I could contribute something to the wiki once I get this ironed out.


Thanks,

Kevin