Oops - Ubuntu Hosed MacOS

[alfista]

Hi All,

Don't ask me why, but I installed Ubuntu to an external hard disk connected to the mac as a test. I did not make any changes to the partition on the internal disk and did the full installation on the external disk. Now the Mac will not boot into OS X. All the data is still there, according to Disk Utility, but I'm not sure how to repair the boot information (EFI, boot sector). The mac was at one point configured with bootcamp, but I deleted the windows partition and expanded the mac filesystem, so there might still be some windows remnants kicking around. I have some things I want to try, but don't like messing with data all that much. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[r.j.s]

I was trying to help a guy with a very similar problem last week, and he ended up having to copy over a cloned backup he had ... something about Ubuntu not playing well with EFI.

 

[Theophany]

Likely culprit is Grub (the Ubuntu bootloader). By default it is installed on the first sector of the HDD, where the MBR would normally be on a Windows machine. I'm sure rEFIt would be able to solve the problem if you could boot into OS X. Maybe try an 'Archive and Install' of Leopard from the DVD?

Btw, your username, Alfa owner?

 

[alfista]

Thanks guys - I'll look into those options. I also have some free space on the drive so I thought I could create a new partition and install a fresh OS there.

My father was a classic alfa owner - a '62 2600, Spider and 60's GTV coup.

 

[alfista]

reFIT worked like a charm. Burned the ISO on a windows box, booted, and it reset the bootsectors almost automatically.