When trying to install on Mac: "No mountable file system."

Question

I downloaded Ubuntu 14.04.2 - desktop. When I try to open the file, I have the following error message:

NO MOUNTABLE FILE SYSTEM. 

What should I do to solve this problem?

Solution 1

First in order to create a bootable USB on mac for Ubuntu you should follow these instructions I took from the Arch Wiki:

To be able to use dd on your USB device on a Mac you have to do some special maneuvers. First of all insert your usb device, OS X will automount it, and in Terminal.app run: diskutil list

Figure out what your USB device is called with mount or sudo dmesg | tail (e.g. /dev/disk1) and unmount the partitions on the device (i.e., /dev/disk1s1) while keeping the device proper (i.e., /dev/disk1):

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Now we can continue in accordance with the instructions above (but, if you are using the OS X dd, use /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk, and use bs=1m. rdisk means "raw disk" and is much faster on OS X, and bs=1m indicates a 1 MB block size).

# dd if=image.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

20480+0 records in
20480+0 records out
167772160 bytes transferred in 220.016918 secs (762542 bytes/sec)

It is probably a good idea to eject your drive before physical removal at this point:

diskutil eject /dev/disk1

After that install Refind as that should make booting into the USB installation of Ubuntu easy and then reboot your computer and select the USB.

Solution 2

When I try to open the file

This is not an application or software installer and this is not how you install Ubuntu. You need to create a bootable medium, boot it, and then you can install Ubuntu. Macs with up to date firmware should behave like standard UEFI computers with Windows 8 or later, which means just follow the standard instructions. If they work, good for you, if not, follow karel's answer.

Comments

[karel]

possible duplicate of How do I get my Mac to boot from an Ubuntu USB key?

[Reagankm]

I remember it was a bear getting it installed on my Mac. What model Mac do you have? And what steps have you taken to try and install it? (I'd post this as a comment but don't have high enough reputation yet.)

[Pilot6]

Which file are you trying to open?