Mac Linux USB Loader

S

SevenBits

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Hello everyone,

I recently created a tool called Mac Linux USB Loader that allows you to create a live Linux USB system in OS X that boots on Mac hardware using EFI. It has gained some modest attention and I figured I'd post it here to help increase people's knowledge of it.

If any of you have a Mac or use OS X I would be very grateful if you would try this tool and see if you can use it to start up Linux. This requires no hacks, no rEFIt or rEFInd, nothing. It essentially copies the Linux ISO to a USB drive along with a special EFI executable that loads Linux. In the tradition of all things Linux, it is open source and the code is on my GitHub repository at:

github.com/SevenBits/Mac-Linux-USB-Loader

The program can be downloaded by going to:

github.com/SevenBits/Mac-Linux-USB-Loader/downloads

Please note that this is beta software. You can get more information on it on the repo and you can of course fork the it and help me out.
 


Mac-Linux-USB-Loader unfortunately is not supported on leopard. Leopard users MOST need a way to install a linux. The reason we are still stuck with leopard is the upgrade path on older macbooks is almost impossible. 10.6+ is too bloated and slow.

any suggestions for alternatives?
 
You can use Mac Linux USB Loader on Leopard and Snow Leopard:
https://github.com/SevenBits/Mac-Linux-USB-Loader/issues/10

  • Format the USB drive to FAT
  • Create the directory /EFI/BOOT on the USB drive
  • Copy the files bootIA32.efi or bootX64.efi (according to your EFI architecture) from "Mac Linux USB Loader.app/Contents/Resources" directory to the USB's "/EFI/BOOT" directory. You can view an application's contents by ctrl-clicking on the application in Finder and selecting "Show Package Content".
  • Once the correct efi executable is there, you need to copy a bootable Linux iso to /EFI/BOOT/boot.iso
  • Reboot and hold the option (alt) key when the gray screen loads, then select the USB boot option.
 
I use the mac linux usb loader to install the kali 1.0.8 version on usb, but when the OS starts keep asking me username and password. I already try the default passwords but give me authentication failed. It's normal ?
 

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