Arch Linux

ImaginaryFreedom

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

Hello everyone,

I flirted with the idea of dual booting Arch on my Macbook Pro a few days ago, and succeeded in doing so by following the instructions given on this page (using option 1: EFI): Arch Linux with OS X or other operating systems
Then I decided that I wanted to fully commit to the idea, and I wiped my old macOS installation and made a fresh up-to-date High Sierra installation to get the latest firmware and get rid of miscellaneous bloat that had accumulated on my old install.
I followed the same instructions again, but noticed that unlike on my previous installation now macOS was installed on an APFS partition as opposed to HFS+. I figure that doesn't matter, so I created my partition for arch to occupy via Disk Utility all the same.
Now I'm in cgdisk intending to delete the partition I just made and use the free space left to create my desired Arch partitions, and here is the problem:

The partition I created in Disk Utility is sandwiched between the macOS system partition and the Recovery partition like so:

Partition #1: EFI System
Partition #2: macOS system
Partition #3: Arch partition
Partition #4: Recovery HD

I tried finding relevant pages on the wiki and did a bunch of googling, but I can't figure out how I can position the arch partition to be below the recovery partition so that I can logically separate Arch from macOS related partitions (I'm assuming going ahead with the installation like this would be a bad idea).

Thanks!

Last edited by ImaginaryFreedom (2018-02-02 18:06:28)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

I'm assuming going ahead with the installation like this would be a bad idea.

Why?

---

No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

ImaginaryFreedom

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

I'm assuming going ahead with the installation like this would be a bad idea.

Why?

Ignorance, really. I'm worried about anomalies that don't match any of the reference I've found - it doesn't match any of the examples I found online nor my first attempt.
I also don't know how in this situation I should deal with the following statement on the wiki page I linked: "OS X likes to see a 128 MiB gap after partitions, so when you create the first partition after the last OS X-partition, type in +128M when cgdisk asks for the first sector for the partition."
Would I in this situation then organise my partitions like this?:
#1 EFI
#2 macOS
128MiB gap
#3-6 arch boot, root, home
128MiB gap
#7 recovery

Last edited by ImaginaryFreedom (2018-01-31 18:36:26)

tv_m3i

Member

Registered: 2018-01-30

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

I've been running a macOS + Arch dual boot and have the main macOS partition and recovery partition within an APFS container. Is your recovery partition not an APFS volume?

ImaginaryFreedom

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

I'm not sure. My macOS partition shows up as type "Unknown" in cgdisk, the recovery partition shows up as type "Recovery HD"

Last edited by ImaginaryFreedom (2018-01-31 22:11:15)

tv_m3i

Member

Registered: 2018-01-30

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

If you boot into macOS, you can run `diskutil list` to see details. Or use Disk Utility.app.

Regardless, there's nothing I'm aware of that would make the placement of the recovery partition an issue. As a test, you could try booting into the macOS recovery console to make sure that still works.

ImaginaryFreedom

Member

Registered: 2018-01-31

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Partition order problem when trying to dual boot Arch on Mac

I went ahead with the installation without any issues (as far as I can tell), so I think everything's fine. I'll mark this post as solved, though there really wasn't an issue in the first place, just my paranoia