Mac Mini with Ubuntu how to restore MacOS I have a Mac Mini 2012 Server which has Ubuntu running on it. The issue I have is that I cannot seem to get it to boot from USB at this point in order to reinstall MacOS. Holding down Alt/Option seems to make a keyboard light blink and it waits until I let go. It then promptly boots Ubuntu again. I try Ctrl/Command+R and it boots to Ubuntu again. Same with CTRL+Shift+R.
I’m guessing the blinking light is the Mac saying it cannot find the recovery partition. Which I get... they were brand new drives right out of the box. The thing I’m confused about is that it is not giving me any option to boot from USB.
I still have the old drives where one has a 500+ mb EFI partition and the other has a 200+ mb EFI partition. I’m guessing the recovery software is in this partitions. I’m just looking for some guidance on the way to re-install MacOS from USB.
Another interesting thing was that I ran efibootmgr and there are references to a location from the Mac drive. One points to a file... the next points to the partition that file is in. Then there are two that are similar to MacOS but if not have that label. It’s my first time looking at this so I’m not sure if I should expect to see an option in the boot list for USB.
Any help is appreciated.
The keyboard light that was blinking helped. Searching for reason where that would happen said there was not enough power to the keyboard. The (non-Apple) keyboard was going through a KVM switch (which actually is powered). So I figured there is something it doesn't like about the keyboard.
After directly connecting an Apple keyboard to the Mac Mini I was able to start the recovery process.