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#1 2017-01-30 16:31:59

markus21
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 26

USB Install | MacBook 7,1 | Grub2 only

Hey everyone,

I wanted to install Arch Linux for my MacBook 7,1 again.
This MacBook needs to be started by Grub2, so I can get the graphics card to work (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ma … ,1#Nvidia)
I also don't like refind and bootmanager like these to run grub / OS X, I rather just hold the alt key to change the OS.

So I installed Grub, using the native bootloader ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ma … _with_GRUB )
Unfortunately this means I have to set up a HFS+ partition as /boot.

/dev/sdc1 vfat esp
/dev/sdc2 ext4 /
/dev/sdc3 hfs+ /boot

# touch /boot/mach_kernel
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# mv /boot/EFI/arch/System/ /boot/
# rm -r /boot/EFI/

Nevertheless it worked in the beginning. But after installing nvidia-340xx drivers, the HFS+ partition gets corrupted after every reboot. I always have to fsck.hfsplus for being able to boot again. I ran into this problem the last time I used Arch Linux on my MacBook and couldn't find a way to fix this.

After that I tried to install Grub on a separate FAT32 Partition. (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mac#Using_blessing)
Therefore I reformatted the HFS+ partition to FAT32, changed my fstab and installed grub once more and made a config file.

Also without using the blessing command, the integrated bootloader showed the Grub entry. However Grub2 ran into an error: unknown filesystem.

At last I tried to mount the esp paritition as /boot and installed Grub directly to the esp (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ma … n_directly)
Using this method however didn't bring up anything in the Macs integrated bootmanager. Maybe the reason therefore is, that I installed Arch on an USB Stick and the bootmanager only looks in the esp of the internal drive - I don't know.

However if there's anybody around who could help me, installing grub2 on an USB-Stick to boot Arch without using refind it would be great.

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