Arch Linux

wombat23

Member

Registered: 2011-01-14

Posts: 46

efibootmgr on Macs

Aparrently all Linux installation wikis recommend *not* using efibootmgr on Macs with warnings like this:

"Warning: Using efibootmgr in Apple Macs will brick the firmware and may need reflash of the motherboard ROM. There have been bug reports regarding this in Ubuntu/Launchpad bug tracker."
(Arch wiki article "UEFI")

So I wanted to know more about this and investigated a little. It seems like that warning concerns only old kernel versions. See kernel commit log http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … b622824aed

and a mailing list post by Matthew Garrett http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux … 03227.html

There is also a forum post here of a user who obviously used efibootmgr on his Macbook Pro without problems: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1090307

I e-mailed Matthew Garrett and he confirmed the bug should be fixed. If that's true, Mac users would no longer need the Mac OS X bless utility, and the WIKI would no longer need to distinguish between Non-Mac and Mac systems. I just wanted to leave this here so the matter can be resolved.

rekoil

Member

Registered: 2013-09-04

Posts: 3

Re: efibootmgr on Macs

So I've been looking, and I can't really find a definitive answer on this. Can efibootmgr be used on Macs without bricking them now?

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: efibootmgr on Macs

According to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ma … Linux_only

in Macbooks you cannot use efibootmgr

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: efibootmgr on Macs

Please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27

Closing

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