Return of the Mac

Both of my pi3 are broken! One (physically and literally) melts any pen drive connected to it - and - the other … is … dead?

I have a MacMini from Mid-2011 so here’s what happened when I reformatted it to be my new Debian host.

I haven’t been “with this” for a while so it took me a few tries to get the Mac running headless. I still can’t get WiFi up (IDK) but I can live with my mains networking kit … but okay!

I’m also giving up on OctoPrint … but … that’s fine …

Finding an Image

Pulling together whatnot I found the following table of data … which … fine; I have a 5.1 Mac Mini

|Intro. |July 20, 2011 |Disc. October 23, 2012| |–|–|–| |Order |MC815LL/A |Model A1347 (EMC 2442) |Family |Mid-2011 |ID Macmini5,1 |RAM |2 GB |VRAM 288 MB* |Storage| 500 GB HDD| Optical None*

It’s still Super Tedious ™ that Apple won’t make this obvious … but okay!

Debian’s website had an .iso that seemed fine … I guess; weird that the “network install” images are now the size of a CD … but okay!

Writign the Image

I have a day job in development; I use a Windows desktop.

So, I need a Windows tool to write this image as a Bootable pen drive.

PenDrive Linux … doesn’t do that anymore.

Rufus does - so I’m using that going forward.

Partitions

I tried to keep the Mac recovery partitions, but, wasn’t able to do that … but okay!

I deleted everything and let the partition manager go wild with it - seems fine.

Package Selection

The setup was simple.

I skipped all of the GUI stuff and added SSHd and the other basics. Once reformatting was done, I SSH’ed in and added Docker from apt - no problem.

Next Time

The missing WiFi package seems to be b43/ucode29_mimo.fw which (I guess) comes from b43-fwcutter and/or firmware-b43-installer. I messed around with it for a while, but, it didn’t seem to “kick in” which made it a bit of a bust.

In a PerfectWorld ™ I’d be able to add WiFi and hide this little plate downstairs or something - but - I’ll probably put it in the network cabinet connected to the router by a physical cable … once my electrical problems here are “sorted”

… I have unrelated electrical issues at home … I should go deal with those today; but okay!

If you’re coming here from the future - you may find some of these useful … or not; stuff changes, and, I wasn’t 100% successful.

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Peter LaValle avatar
Peter LaValle
Any links probably include affiliate ids for that sweet sweet kickback - and some programs require that I tell you. The contents of this blog are likely unrelated - as they include games, paints, and build tools.