Difficulties creating USB stick that boots and installs on MacBook circa 2007

Question

I am having difficultly trying to install Loki on my MacBook circa 2007. Firstly following the instructions and using Etcher to burn elementaryos-0.4-stable-amd64.20160921.iso I created a USB stick that booted fine on my mid 2012 MacBook Pro but not on the 2007 MacBook.

I found this blog post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2266424, and following its instructions of copying bootIA32.efi from Mac Linux USB loader I was able to boot off the USB stick. However when I try installing it always errors with this

grub-install /dev/sda' failed. This is a fatal error

I've tried about half a dozen times and enabled the internet during installation to no avail.

Answer 1

I had this very problem installing on a similar Macbook. For me, it seems that the problem had to do with the way I created the USB stick. I had been following similar instructions.

Ultimately, I got it to work when I setup the USB stick using Etcher, as described in the Elementary OS setup instructions on their site.

Answer 2

Ventoy is another neat utility that allows you to select any ISO stored on your USB stick and boot as if it were a CD/DVD.

This has been really key to getting around the 32-bit EFI issue on my mid-2007 MacBook (which it sounds like you have too) and has worked wonders.

I copied the Elementary 6.1 ISO to my Ventoy stick and I’m able to boot into the Elementary Live CD. I also keep the Clonezilla ISO on the stick for recovery and backup.

Give it a shot, it’s sure given my ole little guy new life!