[Solved] Cannot Boot From OS/Recovery Disk

[LaMosca]

Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3P motherboard with F7 BIOS (UEFI capable)
i7-3770 CPU using integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000

Created USB flash drive using Unibeast 6.0, no problems
Boot from USB flash drive, no problems
Erased SSD (single partition) named El Capitan, no problems (second time, I needed to unmount it first before being able to successfully Erase it)
Initial install runs without error, reboots
Select to Boot from El Capitan drive, install continues and completes
Installed El Capitan post-install tools for UEFI systems
Ran CustoMac Essentials install

Unable to boot from the El Capitan OS disk or Recovery
BIOS lists the following devices as boot options
Mac OS X
Mac OS X
UEFI: Samsung 830 Series SSD

No matter what I select, it won't boot without using the USB flash drive (from which I installed).

One thing I noticed, is that the SSD is using CoreStorage (see info below for disk0 which is the physical disk and disk1 which is the logical CoreStorage volume). I seem to recall this being an issue when I used Clover for Yosemite and this needed to be reverted to a non-CoreStorage disk/volume before it would work properly. Is that still the case with El Capitan?

$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *128.0 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage El Capitan 127.2 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
$ diskutil list disk1
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS El Capitan +126.8 GB disk1
Logical Volume on disk0s2
5C39FDED-E20A-417D-94DF-DE2395EC51E5
Unencrypted

Using the commands below, I mounted the EFI partition of disk0:

mkdir /Volumes/EFI
sudo mount_msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI

When I look in /Volumes/EFI, there is only one file (so none of the typical Clover stuff one would expect to find, including config.plist):

$ cd /Volumes/EFI/EFI/APPLE/EXTENSIONS
$ ls -al
total 30724
drwxrwxrwx 1 UID staff 512 Oct 10 22:06 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 UID staff 512 Oct 10 22:06 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 UID staff 15729264 Oct 10 22:06 Firmware.scap

I'm sure this is an issue, I'm just not sure if one should revert the disk to non-CoreStorage or do something else.

Anyone?

Btw, I need to be able to boot from the Recovery Disk to be able to turn off SIP so I can install the OpenZFS driver to get at all my data.

 

[LaMosca]

Cannot Boot From OS/Recovery Disk

Considering I could redo the build (since I was doing a fresh install on a second SSD in my system), I went ahead and reverted the CoreStorage disk/volume:

$ diskutil corestorage revert /dev/disk1
Started CoreStorage operation on disk1 El Capitan
Switching partition from Core Storage type to original type
Reclaiming space formerly used by Core Storage metadata
Even though the disk is now fully reverted, you should reboot soon to re-mount your reverted disk from the actual original partition
Removing Physical Volume
Destroying Logical Volume Group
Remounting former Physical Volume as normal disk
Core Storage LV UUID: 5C39FDED-E20A-417D-94DF-DE2395EC51E5
Core Storage disk: disk0s2
Finished CoreStorage operation on disk1 El Capitan
$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *128.0 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS El Capitan 127.2 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

NOTE: Disk1 was still listed as before, you need to reboot (boot again from "El Capitan" disk with the USB flash drive).

Only then, you'll see the CoreStorage volume is no longer there (NOTE: Disk1 is now an internal ZFS disk instead of the CoreStorage "El Capitan" volume):

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *128.0 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS El Capitan 127.2 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: ZFS 3.0 TB disk1s2
/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *15.6 GB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS USB 15.3 GB disk2s2

From here, I re-ran the post-install steps (Clover for UEFI and CustoMac Essentials). I now have additional directories in EFI:

$ ls -al /Volumes/ESP/EFI
total 10
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 10 22:06 APPLE
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 BOOT
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 1024 Oct 11 14:30 CLOVER
-rwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 1822 Oct 11 14:30 Clover_Install_Log.txt

 

[ammulder]

Cannot Boot From OS/Recovery Disk

From here, I re-ran the post-install steps (Clover for UEFI and CustoMac Essentials). I now have additional directories in EFI:

$ ls -al /Volumes/ESP/EFI
total 10
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 10 22:06 APPLE
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 512 Oct 11 14:30 BOOT
drwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 1024 Oct 11 14:30 CLOVER
-rwxrwxrwx 1 masshej staff 1822 Oct 11 14:30 Clover_Install_Log.txt

That looks correct. Is everything working now?

 

[LaMosca]

Cannot Boot From OS/Recovery Disk

Yes, this allowed me to complete the build and boot from the SSD.

Not sure if steps could/should be added to the sticky of issues/fixes to check for CoreStorage and revert?

 

[ammulder]

Added, thanks.

 

[Monkeyswithguns]

I wish I had found this a few days ago. This page was huge hekp. Only thing I did wrong the first 2 tries was to run it from the diskutils on the USB drive installer. I ran it from the actual install to drive and it was magic. This need to be a stickie. Thank you for taking the time to write this post. The extra HFS is now gone.

 

[DemisesAngel]

Cannot Boot From OS/Recovery Disk

Yes, this allowed me to complete the build and boot from the SSD.

Not sure if steps could/should be added to the sticky of issues/fixes to check for CoreStorage and revert?

I don't know who you are or how you found out about doing this step but you are my savior! I have been spending hours on this very same issue. I don't care if I'm reviving this from February, I just wanted to thank you!