Solus 4.1 not seeing boot partition on Macbook early 2016 after install

Justin

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

wakatara

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!

wakatara

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.

Axios

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

wakatara

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.

Axios

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.

wakatara

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.

Axios

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.

Axios

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.

Axios

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

Axios Solus uses GRUB for legacy boots.

wakatara

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).

Axios

Interesting!

Justin

wakatara Because grub is ancient and not suited for EFI installs.

Axios

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

wakatara

Axios Thanks, this is helpful though I had set it up similar to this just with the Apple disk conventions. Will take another boo at it this weekend when I get some time. By altering the bootmanager settings I've definitely caused further install mischief on my machine. =p

Axios

Turn off the machine when you try this turn it back on as its coming on hit f9 every 1/2 second or so see if that does anything!

wakatara

Justin And yet, it's the only thiong that is working. I think it's grub2 actually.

Axios

In order to maintain compatibility with MS-Windows, Apple uses a hybrid UEFI and Legacy MBR mode. Apparently, there is an NVRAM value that tells the firmware whether to attempt to boot in UEFI mode (OS-X) or in legacy MBR mode (Windows). That value is controlled by your selection in "System Preferences > Startup Disk". (Don't ask me why, ask Apple)
I think I would seriously try the legacy solus to see if it boots. if it does would tell you theirs a problem with the efi setup

Am done rambling let us know how it turns out this is what happens when your a tech for 30 years..haha

wakatara

Axios Hehe. I hear you. I have about 25. I ended up bricking the machine and then completely nuking the partitions and boot manager and starting from scratch. Solus would not install despite best attempts. I am stumped as to why at this point but I was capable of getting POP_OS! 19.10 to install (I needed to disable encrypted drive as the keyboard was not supported when booted in but after that works fine.).

I will do some digging around some more when I have more time to play with it, but I may wait for Solus to update to 4.2 =p and see how POP_OS does when it gets to the 20.04 release since it's Ubuntu and Debian based. The latest Ubuntu 20.04 nightly borked on installing (despite a previous working) so feel like maybe some patience here might be a good idea. Lol.

I think the biggest issue here for me is not really understanding what precisely is going wrong. I will go read up a bit more about EFI nad new bootloaders and what mystic things Apple is doing differently. LIke I said, I love the hardware of the Macbook 12" 2016 but at this point, probably looking at a new LG Gram 14" when they're out in a month or so to just make life easier on myself. =]