i-Geek Question

Jim Rosenow

Jim Rosenow

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Jim Rosenow
A buddy gave me a couple old MacBook Pro A1150's, in perfect working order. I can barely spell iThing, although fairly fluent in DOS, Win, and Unix/Linux. My bud can't remember the admin passwords on the units. which is somewhat limiting, of course.

I would like to blow the hard drive away and load Linux from either a memory stick or a boot CD. Is there a key combo that will abort the boot, and let me choose what to boot from?

....or is there a way for an i-neophyte to download a clean iOS to play with, given the above constraints?

Seems these would be great for low-intensity tasks, if I can get away from running as 'guest'.

Thanks!
Jim
 
Hold down the option key as you fire up the machine - it’ll give you an option to boot from whatever it detects.
 
Thanks, figured there had to be such a thing!

Both the USB stick and CD are proven units, and will load in other computers. The Apple OS doesn't see the memory stick (although the hardware lights it up), and thinks the Mint or Ubuntu CDs are Windows CDs.

Booting from the CD brings up what almost looks like DOS....

1.
2.
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:


..... and doesn't accept further keyboard input that I've found. Hmmmmm......

Might be getting to the point to just swap the HD for an already working Ubuntu drive and see what happens.

Jim
 
Jim Rosenow said:
My bud can't remember the admin passwords on the units. which is somewhat limiting, of course.
Click to expand...
Before you pave them, you might try booting them single user and resetting the passwords.
 
You may be fighting a couple of things.

By the way holding down “C” will attempt to boot the CD.

That’s a Core Duo (not Core Duo 2) and those have to use the 32 bit or “i386” flavor of your favorite Linux (if they still have one, some are dropping 32 bit support) and not “amd64” flavor.

(Ubuntu for example is only building “selected” 32 bit packages now and 18 will be the last official 32 bit supported version of the distro.)

Also for older Intel Macs, if you don’t use Bootcamp or something to set up the EFI boot stuff you’ll have to add an EFI boot loader to do single or multi-boot.

You probably want to keep a TINY partition on those for OSX for certain things, and they really should be booted to OSX before you start this journey to make sure they’ve done all firmware updates or you could have seriously flakey issues.

By the way, if those machines were kept up to date through 2011 they may have gotten the EFI firmware update that allows Internet Recovery. Hold down the Command and R keys while powering up and for best results plug in an Ethernet cable for Internet. (I’ve found wireless recovery to be hit or miss on the really old machines like those.) See if they boot to recovery mode. From there you could do a completely fresh install without needing to download 10.6.8 and burn a CD.

Final note: I’ve also seen those old machines be really flaky about USB boot. That early EFI stuff is a mess. Reinstalling OSX works better from CD.

Oh... and you may need a Mac to burn that CD. Apple distributes 10.6.8 in an apple disk image file. No ISO images. Or at least it’ll be easier.

Hope that helps. I’ll post the download link in the next post.
 
It's funny this came up, I recently dug out an old Macbook 1,1 A1181 model and was thinking about tossing Linux on it also.

It'll be horrendously slow, but I was thinking about stuffing it in a closet doing some home server stuff.

I've had it booted up for a couple of days and I noticed I heard it reboot late last night in the office, so it must have done an auto-update. I'll see if it did the 2011 or later EFI firmware update and Command-R works or not and report back.
 
Nope. No Command-R. The info I had on that EFI boot tidbit was sketchy on a machine this old. Probably just burn a DVD.

Will let ya know how it goes. Bunch of work for a really slow “server”. LOL. But like you I hate to see the hardware go to waste.

Amazing that it’s essentially a Raspberry Pi with one more gig of RAM and a much much better power supply and a monitor and keyboard. :)
 
You folks are amazing!!! I suspect I'm several hours behind in trying/implementing the things suggested!!

Denverpilot...concur, no Command-R here either.... and it reports the software is up to date.

I'm brushing up on my command line skills to try the single-user login/passwd thing. It's been a long time!

Thanks, and keep your thought coming. I am humbled by the amazing knowledge here!

Oh....and aviation-related, as I'm wondering if I can use one of them as a nice little iOS (instructor operating station) for my X-Plane sim. It's a shame to let them just sit...they look virtually new.

Jim
 
If you boot it up and attempt to log in as whatever user was on it, there's a "password recovery" that'll allow you to reset their password and it'll just dump the keychain so you can't use it, which won't matter.

That version of OSX wasn't very secure.

Once in as a former admin user, you can just make yourself a new clean one, and then delete their user.
 
Not seeing that, Nate....logged in as the former user, and have a box for the password, back button, and log in...that's all. Guessing a password just shakes the box (as it were :)

Jim

PS- Oh....duh, you mean in single-user mode!!?
 
Got it! Logged in single-user, and changed the root password using the command line to suit me. Booted into iOS and there was a new user. Logged in as that user with my 'changed' password, and have full admin rights.

....and now, Nate and George, how have I messed things up by logging in as 'root'...which displays as 'system administrator' in iOS?

Jim
 
Hmm. Fail the password a few times. Mine had a “Forgot Passeord?” button I forgot OSX ever had, but maybe that was something I set up eons ago on that thing.
 
Jim Rosenow said:
how have I messed things up by logging in as 'root'...which displays as 'system administrator' in [osx]?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't have messed anything up. Boot it up normally and go forth and administer.
 
Interesting....after I had logged in as root, I changed the pwd for the orignal user, logged out, and when I went to log in as that user, I had a reset password option inside the login area that had not bee there before. iOS works in mysterious ways!

Jim
 
Jim Rosenow said:
Got it! Logged in single-user, and changed the root password to suit me. Booted into iOS and there was a new user. Logged in as that user with my 'changed' password, and have full admin rights.

....and now, Nate and George, how have I messed things up by logging in as 'root'...which displays as 'system administrator' in iOS?

Jim
Click to expand...


You can just go to system preferences -> users and make that ever user you want now. And give it admin rights.

Technically you don’t need to log in if you’re going to blow the machine away but now you can download the DMG of OSX and use the Mac to burn the reinstall DVD.

My plan on mine was to burn the DVD

Reinstall OSX clean

Make sure it did all updates

During install either use the ancient version of Disk Util on the DVD to force OSX into a tiny 20G partition or so, or use a tool to resize it after clean install

Maybe Bootcamp can help with that. Version is so old I will have to experiment

Figure out what distro to use that’ll have 32 bit support for a while. Thinking a Mint will find all the hardware best even though I’ll rarely use the GUI. Might do raw Debian if it isn’t too much brain damage. Goal here is fast... this hardware isn’t worth much real time or effort. Ha.

Then put that in a multi boot setup. And default to it if power is lost. I don’t think the version of OSX or the power hardware has a “power to last state” option on these that far back.

Too bad because the battery is shot on mine. Not worth replacing. Plug it into the UPS and call that good enough.

Will see how I feel about all this after physical therapy. Ha. Might just be lying on the couch recovering later. Ha.
 
Good luck with the PT!! You'll have something to keep your mind busy. Think I'll keep one of these iOS as per ^^^ and convert the other to Linux. Have some 32-bit Linux distros still laying around :-)

Jim
 
Jim Rosenow said:
Good luck with the PT!! You'll have something to keep your mind busy. Think I'll keep one of these iOS as per ^^^ and convert the other to Linux. Have some 32-bit Linux distros still laying around :-)

Jim
Click to expand...

OSX not iOS. I noticed you said the instructor thing for the sim is iOS above...? Hopefully not or it won’t work. :-)
 
I'm such an i-Rookie! Yeah...the instructor station will currently run on my iPad (which is what started this whole debacle when I bought it to move to Foreflight from GP :-)

Jim
 
No worries, we all started somewhere...

I'm just reloading this thing to keep it useful until after it falls below $100/year amortized... haha. Currently at $115 if you count until today, but it's been in storage for years not in service, so I'll pretend it wasn't to make the numbers look better. Two more years and it can be retired haha.

It's kinda like the 19 year old car... not worth spending money on, but if it runs, drive it. Heh.
 
Well-said, Nate....either that or I'm just a cheep azz :-)

Is there anything comparable to NoScript in the Mac world? My iPad (iOS) Safari is all or nothing in that regard, and it looks like the new/old Mac (OSX) is the same. See, I'm learning!

Jim
 
Jim Rosenow said:
Well-said, Nate....either that or I'm just a cheep azz :)

Is there anything comparable to NoScript in the Mac world? My iPad (iOS) Safari is all or nothing in that regard, and it looks like the new/old Mac (OSX) is the same. See, I'm learning!

Jim
Click to expand...

Dunno for Safari. I use Chrome and Firefox on all platforms, and use their blocking and other plug-ins. Safari is proprietary junk, like Edge.
 
Yup....I've got various flavors of Linux on the computers at the house, and I've been using Waterfox since RJM62 turned the forum on to it (thanks Rich). The exception are the two pretty serious desktops I've got networked for the sim, which are Win10 as some of my add-ons (mostly the GTN clones) need Win. I like the ability to selectively disable scripts that NoScript provides....don't need Facebook, etc in my biz! :)

Next adventure!?....learn how to install 'stuff' (Firefox) on OSX!! Yeeha! Thanks again, all!

Jim
 
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Linux rules.
Apple sux.

I'm currently a big fan of Mint, Cinnamon. I have it on all 5 servers in my house.
That's all.
 
Jim Rosenow said:
Good luck with the PT!! You'll have something to keep your mind busy. Think I'll keep one of these [osx] as per ^^^ and convert the other to Linux. Have some 32-bit Linux distros still laying around :)

Jim
Click to expand...
NetBSD still gets built on i386 if you need 32-bit support.
 
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