Ubuntu external firewire disk macbookpro

[cekuhnen]

hey

any macbooks here who were able to get ubuntu installed on
an external hard disk and are able to boot into it?

In case you did - how did you do it?
What were you steps?

THX

[arexma]

I´ve never tried it, but:
I´d ready a pendrive and boot ubuntu from it running it live to see if all works as expected.

Alternatively you can burn the iso to a cd and skip the quote below.

@Ubuntu Homepage

We would encourage Mac users to download Ubuntu Desktop Edition by burning a CD for the time being. But if you would prefer to use a USB, please follow the instructions below.

         Note: this procedure requires an .img file that you will be required to create from the .iso file you download.
          
         TIP: <i>Drag and Drop</i> a file from Finder to Terminal to 'paste' the full path without typing and risking type errors.

• Download the desired file

• Open the Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/ or query Terminal in Spotlight)

• Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil (e.g., hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso)

•                  <b>Note:</b> OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically.
  

• Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices

• Insert your flash media

• Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)

• Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)

• Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./ubuntu.img or ./ubuntu.dmg).

• Using /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk may be faster.

• If you see the error dd: Invalid number ‘1m’, you are using GNU dd. Use the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.

• If you see the error dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the ‘Disk Utility.app’ and unmount (don’t eject) the drive.

• Run diskutil eject/dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes

• Restart your Mac and press alt while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB-Stick

After having booted into the live ubuntu, I´d plug in the USB HDD and simply install it from there using the live ubuntu itself, write GRUB in the MBR of the USB HDD and on next boot, simply boot from the usb hdd.

I guess you´r asking this because you got no room on your hdd for an ubuntu partition, however, you can resize mac partitions as well on the fly without using data, but you need to use the console =)

Step by step manual here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/55274/2007/02/marchgeekfactor.html

If you got a fast Pendrive it got a very good performance and if you got a windows at hand you could set it up with USB Pendrive Installer and run it there with a casper file system to store your personal stuff, then its a live ubuntu from a pendrive, where you can install your stuff and store your settings, which has the advantage, you always got your working environment in your pocket.

I´d also recommend using a windows machine and the pendrive installer prepping the pendrive for install, rather than using the mac commandline - its prone to error