@spandey: Thanks for that latest instruction, it looked promising, so I tried it out and left the "install GRUB" button unchecked in the installation . . . which thankfully doesn't take too long . . . there were some issues, in the installation the LMDE installer for MAc doesn't have "advanced" button as it seems to be in some of the instructions for Ubuntu based LM. So on the second LiveDVD boot i went up to the "where do you want to install LM?" tab and then back to as far as I could go in the installer which was "timezone"???? and then I did the "fn-ctrl-alt-F2" and that did give me a Terminal window, and I ran your suggestions, but needed to add "sudo" in front of everything . . . and it did retrieve GRUB2 and possibly install it but it could not find where to put it, I followed the last step to "shutdown" and . . . no, it would not boot. I tried to restart in the Live DVD one more time and just went to the Terminal, since XFCE was already installed in sda3 I figured to try your commands in a Terminal window while booted in LiveDVD, tried to run the commands again and managed to copy paste the results into an email and send it to myself. Both times it had a problem with your "sudo chroot /target" command, and then later it had some other problems. It seems like we're getting closer, but not there yet.
mint@mint ~ $ sudo chroot /target
chroot: cannot change root directory to /target: No such file or directory
mint@mint ~ $ sudo aptitude install grub gptsync
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gptsync grub
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 141 kB of archives. After unpacking 246 kB will be used.
Get:1
http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/ testing/main gptsync amd64 0.14-2 [22.6 kB]
Get:2
http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/ testing/main grub amd64 0.97-65 [118 kB]
Fetched 141 kB in 16s (8,786 B/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package gptsync.
(Reading database ... 130668 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking gptsync (from .../gptsync_0.14-2_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package grub.
Unpacking grub (from .../grub_0.97-65_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up gptsync (0.14-2) ...
Setting up grub (0.97-65) ...
mint@mint ~ $ sudo gptsync
gptsync: Missing device name
Usage: gptsync [-q] [-t] <device>
-q quiet mode
-t truncate partitions affected by 2 TiB limitation
mint@mint ~ $ sudo grub-install /dev/sda3/
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?).
mint@mint ~ $ sudo update-grub
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for / (is /dev mounted?).
mint@mint ~ $ . . . e.e.p. . . . out until the next time.
MacPro '12 multiboot various linux OSs with some aging OSX's . . . .