error: "no free pages available"?

[Charles Turner]

Hi all-

After many years as a happy Linux-PPC user, I'm really working to get 
Debian running on my Mac Mini. It's a new Core 2 Duo machine.

I'm trying to install Debian Lenny on an external USB disk (30gb) and 
have tried quite a few combinations. The most recent and successful is 
this:

Get latest Grub2 from CVS and build on Debian Lenny running in VMware 
Fusion. Make grub.efi as per the Grub Wiki's "TestingOnEFI" page, with 
the addition of ext2 and linux modules to the image.

Partition the disk via OSX DiskUtility to have a 1gb HFS+ volume on the 
GPT, the rest free space. Install grub.efi as per the wiki page and 
bless.

Boot a recent (09/2007) Debian i386 Lenny netinst CD, chosen because I 
believe the EFI support is  on by default in the kernel. Partition and 
install a basic system in the free space. Don't install Grub via the 
installer.

Reboot holding down the option key, "EFI Boot" USB volume appears, 
select and get Grub2 shell prompt. Enter:

linux (hd0,3)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-2-686

which returns:

[Linux-EFI, setup=0x1e00, size=0x142490]

and then:

initrd (hd0,3)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.21-2-686

which returns:

error: no free pages available

. . .

Could someone amplify on the significance of this message? I'm not sure 
where to go with this bit of information.

Thanks in advance, Charles Turner