In the theory of the Riemann integral on an interval $[a,b]$, it is completely standard that "partitions" of $[a,b]$ are necessarily finite. This is what Riemann did for his Riemann sums. What Rudin gives is not Riemann's approach but a slightly simpler one of G. Darboux, which uses upper and lower sums and upper and lower integrals: Darboux used finite partitions too. (Perhaps following Rudin, many people do not distinguish between the integrals of Riemann and Darboux: although they are defined differently, they can be shown to yield the same linear functional, in particular with the same domain of integrable functions: those which are bounded and with a zero measure set of discontinuities.)
Thus your question "Are finite partitions sufficient?" is a little strange from the standard perspective: sufficient for what? All the usual theorems and proofs use finite partitions.
In fact I own or have flipped through at least a dozen texts treating the Riemann integral, and to the best of my recollection I have never seen a "proper" Riemann integral using countably infinite partitions. Could you include in your question the precise definition you learned? Is there any textbook which uses this definition? (Are there any advantages to doing so?)
That the first condition implies the first is immediate, since (using your notation) you always have $m_i \le f(\xi_i) \le M_i$, so the sums in the second definition are caught between the $L$ und $U$ sums.
Edit in response to a comment an additional explanation is necessary here. For this direction
it suffices to show that $I^* = lim_{||P||\rightarrow 0} L(f,P)$ and $I_* = lim_{||P||\rightarrow 0} U(f,P)$ Since both parts are similar it suffices to show, e.g., the first equality.
First it is easy to see that for partitions $P\subset P^\prime$ we have $L(f,P)\le L(f,P^\prime)$. A remaining hurdle is that for two partitions we do not necessarily know that one is a subset of the other one. This is resolved by looking at common refinements:
Assume $P$ satisfies $L(f,P) > I^* - \varepsilon$ and $Q$ is an arbitrary partition. We need to show that then there is a refinement $Q^\prime$ of $Q$ such that $L(f,Q^\prime)\ge L(f,P)$ (and, consequently, $L(f,Q^\prime)>I^*-\varepsilon$).
For $Q^\prime$ one can choose the common refinement $R$: if $P=\{x_1,\ldots x_n \}$ and $Q=\{y_1,\ldots y_m \}$ then we just let $R = P\cup Q$. Since this is a refinement of both $P$ and $Q$ we have both $L(f,R)\ge L(f,P)$ as well as $L(f,R)\ge L(f,Q)$
Second edit: the original version was not correct:
For the other direction it suffices to show that if the function is integrable in the sense of the second definition then both $I_*$ and $I^*$ agree with the of the sums from the second definition. Since the reasoning is the same in both cases I'll just look at $I_*$.
So fix $\varepsilon >0$ and a given partition $P$ such that
$$|L - \sum_{i=1}^n f(\xi_i)\Delta x_i |< \varepsilon$$
if only the partition is fine enough.
Choose such a partition $P=\{x_0,\dots x_n\}$ and to $[x_{i-1},x_{i}]$ choose $\eta_i\in[x_{i-i},x_{i}]$ such that for
$m_i:=\inf \{ f(x):x\in [x_{i-1},x_i]\} $
we have $$0\le f(\eta_i)-m_i\le \frac{\varepsilon}{2n}$$
Then
\begin{eqnarray}
| L -\sum_{i=1}^n m_i \Delta x_i|
& = & |L- \sum_{i=1}^n f(\eta_i)\Delta x_i + \sum_{i=1}^n f(\eta_i)\Delta x_i
-\sum_{i=1}^n m_i\Delta x_i| \\
&\le & |L- \sum_{i=1}^n f(\eta_i)\Delta x_i| + \sum_{i=1}^n | f(\eta_i)
- m_i|\Delta x_i \\
& < & \frac{\varepsilon}{2} + \sum_{i=1}^n \frac{\varepsilon}{2n}=\varepsilon
\end{eqnarray}
If you 'see' that $0 <L -I_*< L -\sum_{i}m_i \Delta x_i$ then you are done here, otherwise it follows easily from the last estimate that the $\sum_i m_i \Delta x_i$ are, for any partition which is fine enough, $\varepsilon $ close to the fixed real number $L$, which of course implies that the $\sup$ over these sums exists and equals $L$ (here you need to use again the fact that you will approach the $\sup$, if it exists, if the width of the partitions goes to $0$).
Best Answer
D.C.Gillespie proved the theorem in 1915 (Annals of Mathematics, Vol.17) and what a proof !
To propose the proof as an exercise in a calculus book seems rather strange ...
However see exercise 2.1.19 in Bressoud's A Radical Approach to Lebesgue's Theory of Integration. There is a hint on page 300. Can it help ?
See also theorem 1 in Kristensen, Poulsen, Reich A characterization of Riemann-Integrability, The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.69, No.6, pp. 498-505.
But the story is the same !