GRUB Frozen after Booting from rEFIt on 2006 iMac

[Javelin Dan]

Hi Folks -

First time posting here for years after I had to finally abandon my eMac that just outlived its usefulness even after installing Ubuntu and slowed down to a crawl on the internet.

I've been using Windows machines ever since loaded with various versions of Linux. But about 2 weeks ago, my Compaq Presario suddenly died and I was faced with the purchase of another computer during a winter of being laid off. UGG! Started looking on ebay at Intel Macs and before I knew it, I'm the proud owner of a 2006 iMac 17" running OS 10.7.5! Yes I know that OS is obsolete and unsupported, my plan all along was to use my favorite Linux du jour - Linux Mint.

I basically followed the instructions detailed here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/M...SX_and_Windows_Vista.2C_now_to_install_Ubuntu. As recommended there, I first installed rEFIt. I really wanted to set up at least a triple boot with OS 10.7.5, Linux Mint, TahrPup, and wanted to leave room for possibly something else so I partitioned the hard drive accordingly and installed the two listed Linux distros behind the native OS 10.

It basically went without drama EXCEPT:

Now when the boot menu first appears for rEFIt, I see a Mac hard drive icon (which boots OS 10), and two penguins representing my two Linux distros just as I should. I can navigate freely to any of the options in the rEFIt menu, but after clicking on either of the penguin icons, a proper GRUB menu appears showing all my bootable partitions just where they should be, but at this point any attempt to navigate within the GRUB menu is FROZEN! Since my Linux Mint is positioned at the top of the heap and therefore highlighted, it boots after a few seconds by default. But I have no ability to boot my Puppy Linux on sda6. Can anyone shed any light on this? Can it be corrected?

I just want to add that the tutorial above says to run the partitioning tool in rEFIt. I started to, but it only showed my Linux partitions listed as "basic data", It asked permission to amend the boot menu in a way that didn't list the Linux partitions, so I denied permission and closed out. Should I run it anyway?

 

[ActionableMango]

rEFIt is horribly out of date. You should be using rEFInd.

I use rEFInd. If I select Linux Mint, it just loads Linux Mint (no GRUB menu at all, frozen or otherwise).

 

[Javelin Dan]

Thanks for getting back ActionableMango. I did as you suggested and removed rEFIt and installed rEFind. Nicer menu and the OS selection stays put until you move it, but still the same result trying to boot TahrPup. I did manage to come to a half-assed work-around so I can run Puppy... I run it from a live CD but saved all my settings to a small "Save File" that Puppy allows you to put either on the disk or the hard drive so it becomes persistent and you don't have to start from scratch each time. Boots faster too! Kind of a pain, but then I won't use Puppy for much, at least not on this machine. All those warning pop-ups I got along the way while trying to boot from USB telling me that Apple doesn't support booting external devices was no joke! But overall, I'm happy. Got my hard drive dual boot of OS 10 and Mint, and a way to run Puppy if I want to. Life is GOOD! Thanks!