Hola Solus peeps,

I am trying to install Solus on my early 2016 12" Macbook (a phenomenal piece of engineering that has not let me down once in 4 years).

I've spent into the wee hours trying to get the Solus installer to work. The live USB works fine and I can install the OS fine, but for reasons I cannot fathom, rebooting the machine gets me the dreaded folder/question mark of death (on mac hardware, this usually means it can't see the disk.).

Originally, the installer appeared to be having an issue with partitioning a previous linux install so I used the GParted on the liveUSB disk and nuked the entire disk. Re-installed Solus. Same thing. I went into GParted and can confirm that the boot partition (41GB fat3s with boot and esp flags is there) and the rest of the disk is (after a small space) installed with ext4, but for whatever reason I still get the dreaded question mark/file folder combo.

I imagine this might simply be an issue with the installer being optimized for PCs rather than macs, but it does have me scratching my head a little. I feel I'm pretty advanced with Linux as a use and administrator but more on the server than the underlying hardware bootup process, so could use a pointer on how to diagnose what is going wrong here and resolve it.

I'm already excited since everything on the liveUSB seemed to work out of the box macwise (cmd-click for a right click etc), brightness buttons etc so liking the idea of being able to continue using the old macbook with Solus as my daily driver rather than the new machine I have.

thanks!
Daryl.

Apologies, I should have also mentioned that I am using Solus 4.1 Budgie.

Correction: The /dev/nvme0n1p1 partition is fat32 and 489MB in size (not 512 but assume that is just a mac disk thing) with boot and esp flags on it
The /dev/nvme0n1p2 partition is 465.44 GB (and encrypted) with an lvm flag on it.

according to GParted.

I also tried to install again without the drive being encrypted but get the same result. 😅

Apologies, I should have also mentioned that I am using Solus 4.1 Budgie.

Have you tried the efibootmgr fix to re-add a bootloader entry? Assuming you searched the forum before posting, you must have found this already, since there have been multiple threads about missing bootloaders in the last few weeks.

  • sudo efibootmgr -c -d <disc> -p <partitionnumber> -l "\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi" -L "Linux Boot Manager"

Edit: So for you the command would be:

  • sudo efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1 -l "\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi" -L "Linux Boot Manager"

    Apple is always going to look for an apple boot partition I think so you will have to do the boot key combo and select it if it doesnt show up there its installed wrong. If anbody knows i am wrong let me know. To many computers I have dont have my 2015 pro local to check it Runs solus gnome great and I cant remember..lol This is an article on dual boot https://www.kali.org/docs/base-images/kali-linux-dual-boot-kali-on-mac-hardware/ This is article on single boot https://www.kali.org/docs/base-images/kali-linux-hard-disk-install-on-mac/ Page about Linux bootloaders https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html Hope this helps.

    I have installed Solus on some of my Macs who were stuck on too old or too slow macOS releases. It run really nice on a 2009 27" iMac. But I couldn't make it work on several others where the computer did nothing as soon as I used the live USB. However if the live USB boots then the installer never failed to me. On the iMac I have done single-boot (Solus), dual-boot (macOS and Solus), triple-boot (macOS, win and Solus) .. so it was doable even when at the time I have no clue about linux. 😀 I am almost still there. Can't help further, sorry.

    Ohh and you complaining your 2016 MacBook is old 😂 .. It is ten years younger than my current Mac Pro! 🤣

    Good luck, Macs are notoriously often difficult to put other OSs on. Better off returning it to default, sell and get a PC.

    I have to admit, the forum thread with the efibootmgr solution I had run across but was unsure how applicable it was. Sadly, I am from the old old days of MBR booting, and EFI/UEFI I was not so familiar with (though I did a lot of reading up yesterday. In general, I tried a few Linux installs Friday though most had major issues.

    I did manage to get the pre-beta daily of Ubuntu Budgie 20.20 installed and loaded so I do know it works and will install (so I'd argue it's a bug in the Solus install since elementaryOS 5.1.2 "Hera" and Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.20 work) though speakers and bluetooth are not working (but weirdly, headphone jack is... =] ). Every distro but 20.20 though has a problem where disk encryption being enabled has the keyboard to unlock the disk being disabled in everything but UB 20.20... =]

    <rant>
    To @Justin 's point, yes, I find it a bummer Apple makes amazing hardware that they lock down so much. I could obviously get a PC laptop and probably have fewer issues (though not entirely clear for newer models) but the fact of the matter is I seriously ❤️ my 2016 12" Macbook for my needs and use cases I only begrudgingly upgraded to a newer machine recently. My big beef that I could not find a laptop I liked as much hardware-wise for my uses cases as the Macbook 2016. =p In fact, if anything, the industry seems to have made worse machines at the end of 2019 than I wanted (Razer, HP, Lenovo - though have not had a chance to see the new LG Gram 14"s for 2020 yet. And I'm a conscientious objector about Dell products so the Dell XPS 13" even if I think they did a good job.). </rant>. =p

    (in fact, will write up a blog post on findings when I get a chance.)

    I guess my point is that I really like the Solus distro and I realized from forums that a few people on some hardware had bootloader problems. I was hoping to help track down the issue and help improve the distro for peopel with more modern macs. Since I imagine it's a slightly untapped community for folks. Apple hardware has been getting worse imho, not better, so a lot of people may be interested in alternatives. I'd be happy to help on improving the distro for apple users.

    Will attempt the bootloader fix when I have some time this evening (SG time) and report back @sgvd .

    BTW, if anything I learned a hell of a lot more about partitioning and legacy versus UEFI/bootladers so feel smarter for the problems.

    thanks for everyone's help! I really appreciate you taking the time to weigh in. <bows low>. Merci!

    sgvd I did end up trying this precise change (thank you for the edit) but though after deleting the 0000 number Boot option and then recreating from the command line it marked it "Linux Boot Manager" and Boot0000, which is indicated as the BootCurrent when you run the efibootmgr command cold. I unfortunately still got no joy when rebooting. ☹️

    (thanks for the help though!)

    Did anyone have any other ideas? At this point, I mayhave to punt back to Ubuntu Budge 20.04 daily as it did yield a bootable and encrypted sytem.

    Someone mentioned that this problem in the Solus installer (iirc) comes from using systemd to write the boot manager record which it soetimes thinks it has done but hasn't (though I would have though if that were the case, this would have fixed it.).

    Anyhow, open to any other suggestions. I would really like to be using and contributing to Solus Budgie on tihs particular piece of hardware. =]

    thanks!
    Daryl.

      If you boot with the option (to bring up apples boot menu) key does solus show up? If it does not show up it wont ever boot if its there click on it should run. if it runs install is ok if not solus isnt installed right. If all that is ok then its issues between efi and solus for booting Everybody I watch youtube have no problems install and it boots right up (May want to do a pram reset before reinstall something may have corrupted it causing your problems!! since it holds efi booting info) Anybody correct me if wrong

        Axios

        No, with the Option key after the chime, I get the USB marked as "EFI" bootable and can boot into the live USB but if the USB is not in there I get the dreaded "flashing folder icon with question mark of death" which used to be the harbinger of a total disk failure back in the old mac days. The disk does show up after the Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 install so this may have something to do with the way the systemd thing gets written to that partition thta is peculiar for the mac.

        I noticed the Ubuntu 20.04 pre-beta install that works uses grub2 so may try to see if I can force load grub2 on it and boot that way. But will have to play with it another day since we're back in the work week here in land of merlions.

          Cool the usb works and solus install doesnt show up it wont ever boot If I remb right thats disk Partioning and setup not bootmngrs at this point. Clean the linux partions off disk and format the unused space for fat 32 then reinstall solus but let solus do everything it will prob work then you know its something with disk setup I have had probs with distros in the past if everything isnt just right setting it up manual it wouldnt work. The flashing disk still around today just means it cant find a disk to boot,if that works you can go from there. So many things it could be check your solus sha make sure its not corrupted,redo the usblive again,reinstall, may not hurt to do a hardware check on the mac ,reset pram then you can put those things outta your mind. I just remember the ? icon can show up But when you click on it wont boot! (follow?) that means computer see disk but is not bootable, so in your case it doesnt see disk at all. Had it Happen to me on something dont remember what but first time it showed up (solid not flashing with ? means it saw disk but couldnt find anything to boot on disk) wouldnt boot then I fixed it and it booted. I will leave it there starting to ramble..lol Got life stuff to attend to here to....Gives you some things to think about... I am not sure if solus uses grub somebody would have to answer that? You got to select install bootloader when installing.

            Axios

            Unfortunately, even nuking the entire disk back to ms-dos and letting Solus handle everything re-install is still bringing up the blinking question folder of Fate. It is definitely something Solus-install related as 19.10 Ubuntu derivatives install (though do not support the keyboard properly to decrypt the drive) and I managed to install the nightly for Ubuntu Focal Fossa 20.20 which allows install and boots into a fresh Ubuntu system (with encrypted disk) fine.

            At this point, I'm a bit stumped as to what to do to fix the issue especially after trying the manual bootloader fix and deleting all the bootmanager entries.

            It's especially frustrating that other distros do install and boot fine.

            Is there anything else I can do here to help diagnose and fix this problem in Solus? I'd obviously really like to help make the distro better in this regard.

            D.

              Yes that was my goal with Linux to because I HATE win10. You could try this long shot but it might tell us something https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/ it strips out the efi part of linux to make it boot legacy only ,After reasearching yesterday i guess mac can boot in legacy mode try installing it and see what happens. Does it show up with option key? I am so surprised it didnt boot. We need to determine if its uefi or bootmngr messing it up.

              Might see if this yields any info Press Command+V as your Mac boots to enter verbose mode. You’ll see the terminal messages appear during the startup process. If everything goes properly, your Mac will boot to its normal desktop.

              Other than that I am dead in the water for ideas right now Since ubuntu uses grub and solus doesnt must be something with that.

                Justin Out of curiosity, why doesn't Solus use grub2 for the entire bootloader? Why 2 diff systems? (it definitely is working for Ubuntu 20.20).

                    This is for my dell allinone only have solus on it the output of efibootmgr -v from what it appears dont need it if you only have one os installed, (or I am wrong) I checked and its booting in efi it just boots directly into solus fine. And I let solus set it up.:
                    efibootmgr -v ouput

                    BootCurrent: 0000
                    Timeout: 0 seconds
                    BootOrder: 0000,0004,0003,2001,2002,2003
                    Boot0000* HDD1-1 (ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x13,0x0)/Sata(0,0,0)/HD(1,GPT,26657955-0418-4a7b-8fc7-196db88050f4,0x40,0xf4240)RC
                    Boot0003* Network BBS(128,Network,0x0)............................0..........................................
                    Boot0004* Hard Drive BBS(HD,Hard Drive,0x500)................-...........!.....................................Y7v.......A.........................
                    Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC
                    Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM RC
                    Boot2003* EFI Network