Repurposing an old Mac Mini...

[danaedanae]

I've posted this elsewhere online but had no replies so either it's a case of I'll have to suck it and see or I'm phrasing this badly! ;-)

I've got a Mac Mini 1,1 Core 2 Duo 2.16Ghz with 2GB RAM. (It's been hardware upgraded.)


I'd like to install 64bit FreePBX on it as I need to install a FreePBX module that will ONLY work on an x86 system. So my Raspberry Pi won't cut it.

Am I likely to be able to install FreePBX/Sangoma OS on the Mac Mini? I came across this webpage and it looks like it might be a world of pain!


Any thoughts? NB I am not interested in dual booting, quite happy to totally remove OS X in favour of the new OS.

 

[opeter]

If it support the hardware, it should work. At the beggining you need to hold the ALT key and you get the "boot menu", choose the CD or USB key, where the installer is located and install the system.

https://www.freepbx.org/downloads/freepbx-distro/

Install instructions:
https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/Installing+FreePBX+10.13.66+Official+Distro

 

[danaedanae]

oh, brilliant! I've clearly got myself in a right old confusion abotu EFI and emulated BIOS and all that stuff and it sounds like it should be a walk in the park! Thank you

 

[opeter]

Your welcome.

If the ISO file you downloaded is not damaged and you burned it the right way to a CD/DVD or you've made a USB boot drive out of it, than it should work without problems.

 

[danaedanae]

Well, so far, it's every bit as painful as I'd feared :-(

Firstly the Mac would not entertain booting the Sangoma live DVD, so I created a live USB stick of the ISO and it booted from that readily. But then it seems totally unable to deal with the file structure/partition scheme/file format whatever on the disk and can't install onto the disk.

So I figured I'd try to wipe it first with a live Linux USB or DVD. I downloaded Slacklive as it has UEFI support and when I booted from that disc I just get "Select CD-ROM Boot Type". It's the familar problem where you can't actually make a choice because the keyboard doesn't work at that point.

I've experimented with holding down '1' and pressing enter quickly. No Dice.

Downloading Ubuntu now with the notion of putting that on a Live USB stick but I'm close to giving up.

 

[amedias]

If you just need to nuke the drive partitions prior to installing your OS of choice because it can't handle the HFS volume (weird that it wouldn't just let you nuke the parition table anyway?) then you could do this by booting the mini in target disk mode or with a Mac OS installer. Remove the existing partitions in Disk Utility and then try again.