Qubes install on EFI MacBook Pro
xxdea...@gmail.com
Booting from the install media for Qubes 3.2 works 100%, and so far, I've used the automatic partitioning to do all of the work for me. Anaconda uses a trick for EFI Macs (ie. Macs that can no longer boot into "legacy" BIOS mode) that creates an HFS+ ESP partition, ostensibly to boot the final product. This tricks the Mac into thinking that there is a bootable OS X installation on the partition, allowing the user to use the Mac's internal bootloader(?) by holding down the Option key at startup (this lists all available OSs, for those who don't know). The problem with the Qubes 3.2 config is that it kicks out a boot.efi file in the expected place (again, where the Mac would expect it, trying to fool the Mac into thinking it's a viable OS X install), but the boot.cfg file is nothing more than an alias file. This file links back to /EFI/fedora/grub.cfg, but the grub.cfg file does not exist there; it's in /EFI/qubes.
The grub.cfg file certainly seems like the correct boot instruction file, as it correctly points to the Qubes lvm by uuid. However, it also points to a completely different partition on the disk (the HFS+ parition would be hd1,gpt1, but grub.cfg is looking for hd1,gpt2). hd1,gpt2 contains an empty "efi" folder, initrd-plymouth.img, xen-4.6.1.gz (and other files) along with a grub2 folder containing the exact same grub.cfg file.
At this point, I'm wondering if there is supposed to be some weird chainloading going on that's not happening, or possibly that the installer is not supposed to make the HFS+ ESP partition, but is doing so because this is the default Anaconda behavior on a Mac. My next step will be to try doing the partitioning by hand in the Qubes installer.
I realize this is likely not the fault of the Qubes development team, but the fact that there are nine different .efi files on the HFS+ partition, all in differnt places, is very, very confusing.
regards,
deadseeds
pixel fairy
> Starting a new thread, as the previous seems to be mislabeled at this point (Empty Xen.cfg after install).
>
> Booting from the install media for Qubes 3.2 works 100%, and so far, I've used the automatic partitioning to do all of the work for me. Anaconda uses a trick for EFI Macs (ie. Macs that can no longer boot into "legacy" BIOS mode) that creates an HFS+ ESP partition, ostensibly to boot the final product. This tricks the Mac into thinking that there is a bootable OS X installation on the
which macs have you tried this on? ive been playing with this on an 11,3 and had to install to an external and update to qubes-unstable to get it boot (maybe some efi incantations could allow qubes-stable, ill try that later) just tried it an hour ago and it lasted about 7 min before freezing.
also, have you had problems with filevault? every time i boot qubes, i have to reset the filevault key.
xxdea...@gmail.com
I'm running Qubes 3.2 successfully on a Macbook Pro 10,1 (I just happened to have one of these sitting around, and it's known to be good on the HCL), and I'm actually posting from that machine right now. I opted to blow OS X off of this machine completely as I don't really need it, so Qubes is the only OS currently on the machine. It was a total pain to get wireless up and running, but it works fine as long as I don't reboot (I just have run some modprobe and insmod commands to get things running again). So, no Filevault on this computer. Overall, this machine has been fairly stable.
The computer with which I'm having trouble is a 13-inch Macbook Pro 12,1. This machine doesn't support booting in "legacy" mode (BIOS compatibility mode, which is how I installed on my other MBP), so it needs to boot using EFI. This is where I'm running into trouble. I'm also trying to install to an external USB drive, so I'm guessing that's only adding to my woes. I'm also using rEFInd as my initial bootloader.
I can get to a branded Qubes grub interface by using "configfile /EFI/qubes/grub.cfg" from the grub command line I get dumped to after selecting grub.efi in rEFInd, but I find it odd that I need to do so. When I select Qubes, I get an error message that says that it can't find the multiboot command. I'm fairly sure that this module needs to be insmod'd in at some point, but I can't figure out where. Or maybe it doesn't, and there's just some hiccup along the way. I've been doing a ton of reading about the EFI boot process and GRUB, but I have no answers yet. If you have any advice, I'm happy to follow it!
regards,
deadseeds