Partition and rEFInd problems when installing openSUSE on Mac

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello,

I was trying to install openSUSE on my 2012 MacBook Pro 15 Retina so that I can have dual OS. The OS X version is 10.11.16. I’ve had a few problems during this process. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(The USB drive with openSUSE iso file burnt was plugged all the time.)

  1. In OS X I’ve already partitioned my hard disk into two partitions using Disk Utility, one is for OS X and the other for Linux. The format of the partition for Linux is OS X Extended (Journaled). Am I doing it right?

  2. I’ve already installed rEFInd in the OS X Recovery mode using the ./refind-install command. After this when I reboot my computer I was able to see the rEFInd page with the OS X icon and the penguin and several other icons.

When I moved the cursor to the little penguin and pressed enter I was presented the Grub page. There was a grub command and I was supposed to type some command after it but I don’t know how…

Then based on this article: http://linuxnewbieguide.org/how-to-install-linux-on-a-macintosh-computer/ I added the following lines to /Volumes/ESP/EFI/refind/refind.conf:

scanfor internal

fs0: load ext4_x64.efi

fs0: map -r

Then I reboot my computer but only saw one icon, which was OS X, on the rEFIind boot page. Other icons disappeared. This means I was only able to boot OS X.

Then I reboot again pressing the Option button. I was able to see the EFI Boot yellow icon. I pressed it, but the grub page showed up again.

Could anyone please tell me where I did wrong or what I missed?

Thank you!

2

It looks like this: SUSE Paste

3

Hi
On my MacBook3,1 (2007) I didn’t use rEFIfind, what I did was a time machine backup. Stuck in a new SSD and booted from an openSUSE rescue USB device to partition the disk with a 260MB efi partition, space for openSUSE (40GB) space for home/data and 100GB partition for osX and a 4GB one for swap

Then used time machine to restore osX on the selected partition, then installed openSUSE. By default it booted straight to openSUSE vie UEFI when I wanted osX just hold the option key and select the osX disk partition.

Since the osX was getting old on the MacBook is now all openSUSE Tumbleweed on a 120GB SSD…

4

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I was able to find the problem - my USB boot device was bad. I burnt the iso file to the USB drive again using this:

dd if=/downloaded/iso/file.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m

and when I reboot the computer I was able to see the openSUSE installation page.

Thank you again.

5

Hi Malcolm,

I encountered another partition problem during installation. As I said in the original post I partitioned my hard drive into two partitions and the second one is OS X Extended (Journaled). However during the partition step of the installation, I noticed that /dev/sda2 was set to ‘Linux native’, and both sda3 and sda4 set to Apple_HFS. Shouldn’t /dev/sda2 reserved for OS X? I tried to edit the partition there but failed. The screenshot is here: SUSE Paste.

I tried to use ‘Expert partitioner’ but the partition table looked like this: SUSE Paste, which was also wrong I believe.

I had to abort the installation and go back to OS X but was not able to figure out a better way to do the partitioning.

Any ideas would be truly appreciated.

6

On Sun 02 Jul 2017 08:56:01 AM CDT, rollschild wrote:

malcolmlewis;2828395 Wrote:
> Hi
> On my MacBook3,1 (2007) I didn’t use rEFIfind, what I did was a time
> machine backup. Stuck in a new SSD and booted from an openSUSE rescue
> USB device to partition the disk with a 260MB efi partition, space for
> openSUSE (40GB) space for home/data and 100GB partition for osX and a
> 4GB one for swap
>
> Then used time machine to restore osX on the selected partition, then
> installed openSUSE. By default it booted straight to openSUSE vie UEFI
> when I wanted osX just hold the option key and select the osX disk
> partition.
>
> Since the osX was getting old on the MacBook is now all openSUSE
> Tumbleweed on a 120GB SSD…

Hi Malcolm,

I encountered another partition problem during installation. As I said
in the original post I partitioned my hard drive into two partitions and
the second one is OS X Extended (Journaled). However during the
partition step of the installation, I noticed that /dev/sda2 was set to
‘Linux native’, and both sda3 and sda4 set to Apple_HFS. Shouldn’t
/dev/sda2 reserved for OS X? I tried to edit the partition there but
failed. The screenshot is here: SUSE Paste.

I tried to use ‘Expert partitioner’ but the partition table looked like
this: SUSE Paste, which was also wrong I
believe.

I had to abort the installation and go back to OS X but was not able to
figure out a better way to do the partitioning.

Any ideas would be truly appreciated.

Hi
OK, the first thing to do in expert mode is the press the ‘rescan
devices’ button. Then go and select sda and partition as required.

Select sda1 and edit to NOT format and select on the right for the
mount point as /boot/efi then create/add your / /home and swap as
required.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
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