clr-boot-manager, not enough space for 2 kernels on MacBookPro 8.1

brent

This is just a guess but your boot partition sounds like its 512MB

FTouzain And I think expanding booting portion on a so old MacBookPro is really risky (reason why I have not done, and I don't know even how I could do this).

Beats me. There are a lot of Mac people here, I hope they chime in...
..but still, is it Mac-related?
Go into a live LINUX environment iso, open gparted, make your Solus boot partition 1GB. Allegedly this should solve everything.

If this has nothing to do with boot partition size (you strangely have not mentioned size) then consider all my ^^^ blah blah a lot of hot air and something different is going on here I can't process (note to self: way too many 15 hour workdays; jack a dull boy).

also;

FTouzain clr-boot-manager update

I think it's this:
sudo sync && sudo clr-boot-manager update

removing any old ones by hand never has worked for me. this command might be better it's supposed to clear old kernels.

that's all the crap in my tired brain; I hope it gets you to a place you can troubleshoot. hope Mac peeps have an opinion too

FTouzain

brent removing any old ones by hand never has worked for me. this command might be better it's supposed to clear old kernels.

I edited my first post to show the command I use to remove the old kernel, it has always worked for me.

using tab after sudo clr-boot-manager remove-kernel show a path with into the pointed directory all the names of kernels found, but you must not keep the path in the command

Yes, sync usage must be better, I will try if I need another time, thanks.

FTouzain

Thank you for your answer.

Yes, my booting partition is 512 MB and yes, it is not specific to the mac.
The specificity of this mac is a special UEFI.

I can increase solus booting partition but what will be the consequences:

on the mac partition still present ?
on the solus system partition ?

I would like to keep the capability to boot in Mac OS X if needed (currently I can by combining some keys at the booting step).

Is there by default remaining space on the device after the boot partition so as to resize it? (so, before the first system partition of the disk).

brent

FTouzain Solus now requires 1 GB for your boot. 512 too small.
EDIT:

while in any iso, open gparted, resize your sda1 fat boot.
A lot of people say back up first, but I just grip and rip it. In fact when Solus first rec'd 1GB from 500 this is the way I do it. In fact I do most heavy lifting with gparted. It should work and it should be painless.
If you are in the iso that partition should be unmounted. you can always double check.
Many use gnome-disks for this kind of thing.
Good luck.

FTouzain

Thank you very much @brent , I will try and keep you informed.

FTouzain

I booted on the live CD of last solus (quite complicated just here to guess which one to choose among all choices available, but ok).

So, I realized with gparted that:
- my EFI System Partition booting is not 512 MB... but 200 MB
- I chose to resize in Gparted... but it is said as I feared: Free space following (MiB): 0

the same with space preceding...

therefore I can't resize up easily the booting partition

The following partition is apple system (HFS+) with 95.82 GiB
I have only a small portion unallocated but not touching that is 128.30 MiB
Then swap partition (initially, I had installed an ubuntu system many years ago)
Then linux partition

Do I have a way to backup apple system and restore it in another partition after moving: not simply I think because gparted does not handle HFS+
This mac has a firewire 500 port that allow to boot on an external hard drive (I own an old one), but pfffffff, sure it won't be an easy task...

not mentioned but I have also rEFIt installed to handle multibooting on this machine

Is there a way to increase the size of the booting partition in Mac OS X system using disk utility? (I suppose not)
The only valuable plan would be:
- backup apple system on the firewire external hard drive
- boot on this hard drive
- remove original apple partition (disk utility)
- ~~increase size of the booting partition~~ not doable in apple disk utility....
- create new hfs partition after that by keeping space to increase booting partition afterthat
- clone system on the new partition cloning tuto
- restart on solus live
- increase booting partition in gparted
- reboot to solus
- update solus
According to you, does it look like safe? or did I forget some apple special trick? 🙂 (filevault is not active on my apple system). Thank you in advance.
For sure it won't be for today... apple hardware is really nice/strong, but soft... is always so complicated to make it opened to other systems !
Of course, I am opened to all other more simple propositions 😉 (would be so great, because I really don't see any other alternative).

brent

It's been so long I've seen an Apple (or a firewire) I can't tell you nothing there.

I would tell you to make the boot bigger you have to make the ext4 smaller....or the swap?..but the monkey wrench here might be the 128MB unallocated...
...on one occasion I've had to make the boot the 3rd thing in the lineup (not boot at top) and that worked fine.

FTouzain According to you, does it look like safe? or did I forget some apple special trick? 🙂 (filevault is not active on my apple system). Thank you in advance.

absolutely get your Mac questions answered. would love to know, myself.

FTouzain

What have been done:

backup mbr for disks
backup apple system on the firewire external hard drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner)
boot on this hard drive
remove original apple partition (disk utility)
boot on solus live usb
increase size of the booting partition not doable in apple disk utility....

error message at the very last step, when formating end portion of the resized UEFI:
libparted messages: GNU Parted cannot resize this partition to this size. We're working on it
Nevertheless, it is displayed as 1000 MB

boot on firewire cloned partition

create new hfs partition after that by keeping space to increase booting partition

afterthat clone system on the new partition cloning tuto

boot on new Mac OS X partition
I check there if the disk is supposed safe by the Disk Utility: "No, UEFI is too big" 🙂

restart on solus
__seems not to recognize both keybord and mouse: nothing move or is written (kernel found in UEFI hang?)

Get back to Mac OS X, repair disk: do not change result in solus: no letter produced by keybord nor moving mouse (so cannot login, but cursor is blinking)

reboot to solus live

so will try to increase UEFI again or if nothing working reinstall solus on its original partition

FTouzain

Solus normal was not able to "live" (login not taking keyboad characters, seemed hanged after typing enter).

restart on solus live

has taken a while, was working after shuting down again computer and changing usb port

increase booting partition in gparted
install Solus on previous Solus partition
reboot to solus
update solus

Everything looks ok: first boot show grub choice between Solus / Mac, both are working

After a classical shutdown, rEFIt menu reappread, but I can login in both Solus and Mac OS X

I made a Solus update, everything was ok, even clr-boot-manager, my current installation show the two kernels I cannot install simulteaneously previously. Therfeore, everthing seems ok.

I hope it is now solved for a long time. Issue can be closed, thank you.

brent

FTouzain dang, you sleuthed your tail off. well done. wish we could have done more. congrats on getting to the bottom of it. new install with both bootloader at F12 (or in your case, Refit, is good).

FTouzain

Thank you.

Everything was ok. So, with only one harddrive, it may work like this.

For information, I had a second harddrive on this macbook pro 8.1 (bought with a ssd I already mentioned and a hardrive in the place of the dvd reader).
This second harddrive was not visible (mountable) in solus. Therefore I used gparted to find what was wrong and "repair" the ext4 partition of this second harddrive.
It worked, but I lost everything on this hardrive (strangely. I believed as soon I do not format, I do not loose things, no warning was displayed in gparted).
But anyway, I was able to mount it in solus. I must have stop at this point.
(if you have 2 hardrive, save what is on them of course at the beginning and do as I mentioned, and stop here).

I thought maybe it was a problem of disk not well recognized and I made my biggest mistake: booting on Mac OS X and check the second disk in DiskUtility. I repair this second disk believing Mac OS X won't have to touch the first disk... But apple software is apple software (as closed as it can be).
When I rebooted, I arrived at rEFIt logo, but without any option to boot bellow it...
So, I must find back my usb key and try to boot on it to "repair" or do again what I exposed here (what apple software destroyed)...

Notice that before trying to repair it, I booted the computer several times both in Solus and in Mac OS X without problem...

So, really take care with disk utility: as exposed above, each time I used it, I had a problem after.

brent

FTouzain So, really take care with disk utility: as exposed above, each time I used it, I had a problem after.

you were formatting (not re-sizing) with it so I can see why everything went poof.

FTouzain I thought maybe it was a problem of disk not well recognized and I made my biggest mistake: booting on Mac OS X and check the second disk in DiskUtility. I repair this second disk believing Mac OS X won't have to touch the first disk... But apple software is apple software (as closed as it can be).

this makes sense. apple probably did not see the disk as 'friendly'.

rough saga. just think if you had one hard drive instead of two 🙂