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/[email protected] 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 < [email protected]> 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 >
