Clover crashing on 'scanning entries' because of software RAID

[benjackson]

Hey there. I just wanted to chime in and say thanks so much for your solid advice. I was installing El Capitain on a system with a 12 TB software RAID (also a filmmaker) and had the exact issue. Your advice solved it and saved the day. Thanks so much!

That's awesome! Glad it helped you.

 

[Apples2Oranges]

EDIT:
New Info - I'm very late to the party, however, Clover replaces the HFSplus driver with VBoxHFS. If you go into your EFI partition under EFI/CLOVER/Drivers64UEFI you can replace VBoxHfs-64.efi with HFSPlus.efi and it solves the need to specify a boot drive to avoid scanning. I haven't tried it yet but I wanted to others to be aware if you're reading this for the first time.

See here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...laces-hfsplus-efi-with-vboxhfs-64-efi.193498/

Direct download for HFSplus driver: https://github.com/JrCs/CloverGrowerPro/blob/master/Files/HFSPlus/X64/HFSPlus.efi?raw=true

Thanks @skoczen for the tip!

----------OLD METHOD--------

Hey all! Just wanted to circle back around and put together a detailed guide. I had to use benjackson's method once again to save a soft RAID! Hopefully this step-by-step info will help others.

**This is not new information, just pictures added. This is for anyone who gets stuck on "scanning entries" on clover boot. It's particularly helpful if you have an apple software RAID and your system lost power or shut down in the middle of writing to that drive, or you are migrating an existing RAID to a new install. Anyone with more experience, please correct my mistakes.

Basic Concept: You need to disable "scanning entries" and at the same time, add a "custom entry" so that Clover knows what to boot without needing to scan every drive connected to your system. We will be using mainly Clove Configurator for this. If you don't have it, get it here: mackie100projects.altervista.org. Be sure you have a backup before you get started...

Step 1
Disconnect the problem drive(s). Ideally, you would disconnect all drives except for the one that your OS install is on. This was the hardest thing for me to figure out at first.

Step 2
Boot up and open DPCIManager and click on the "Misc" tab. If you don't have DPCIManager, get it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dpcimanager/ it's amazing and you should have it. There you will see a log. Scroll down until you see the full system name for you boot volume. It should look something like this: 2,GPT,FBBED34D-93F2-4BFD-85BC-25CD3EEA3321,0x64028,0x37CA9740. Copy that string of characters exactly.

Step 3

• Open Clover Configurator. Mount your EFI partition and open the config.plist (located EFI/Clover/) with CC. Click on the "gui" section in the side menu. Click the little "+" under the "custom entries" box to add your boot drive as a custom entry. Mine is titled "El Capitan."
• 
• Now double click on the new entry you just made to change it's properties.
• 
• Paste the string of characters you copied from DPCIManager into the "Volume" field.
• Check the "title/full title" box and type in the name of your drive as it shows up in your OS.
• Select "Type*" as "OSX"
• Set "VolumeType" to "Internal".
• Now you're very close to being done here, we just need the UUID for your boot drive. We find this by opening Terminal and typing: diskutil info /dev/disk0s2
• 
• Now copy your UUID and go back to clover configurator. Paste the UUID into the "AddArguments" field and type "root=UUID=" before it.

Step 4
Now that you've added a custom entry, it's time to disable scanning. In the same "gui" section of CC, under "scan" select "custom" instead of "auto=yes". Do NOT check any of the boxes under this.

Essentially, this will tell clover not to scan for hard drives when it's starting. If you do this without setting up a custom entry, your system will not boot. That would suck. So that's why we put extra effort into making sure that the custom entry settings are correct. The custom entry is now the only thing clover will look at. Now you can see your RED footage, you're welcome.

Hope this helps someone like me! These are really just notes so that when I need to do a new install, I can remember what I did to transfer my RAID, lol. Good luck!

 

[benjackson]

Hey all! Just wanted to circle back around and put together a detailed guide. I had to use benjackson's method once again to save a soft RAID! Hopefully this step-by-step info will help others.

This is awesome mate! Nice and succinct. Thanks for doing this.

 

[digitalm3]

Thanks @benjackson and @Apple2Oranges great information and tutorial.

Unfortunately this procedure did not work for me and it seemed clover would always scan for entries even after disabling it following your tutorial.

It lead me to discover I was still using the VBoxHFS driver installed by default with clover and not the HFSPlus driver thats recommended.

Once I switched drivers the scanning stopped immediately and I was able to boot properly however I was even able to boot after I re-enabled scanning again. This is useful during upgrades since Apple creates a temporary install parition which will be hidden with this configuration and will prevent the upgrade from happening. Since Sierra should be releasing today I thought I would share my experience, although your mileage may very.

**EDIT: Just wanted to point out that any time you upgrade or reinstall clover it will automatically replace the HFSPlus driver with the vBoxHFS one.

 

[javimontero]

Thanks guys. You saved my day.
Works perfectly.

 

[davemansell]

Thanks for this post @benjackson @Apples2Oranges but could you clarify if by UUID you mean Volume UUID or Partition UUID. DCPIManager won't open on any of my machines (all real mac except this build) so I'm using Terminal and $ diskutil info disk*s* to see the UUIDs. I'm not sure if I should be pointing clover to the partition with my system on it, or the volume. I've tried it both ways and it seems to have solved the scanning issue, but I still can't boot past PCI configuration which seems strange. To be clear, I can boot with this system in UEFI mode if I disconnect the appleRAID drives physically, but that's a massive pain in the ass.

 

[benjackson]

I believe all this is a moot point now. The new version of Clover that I just downloaded and installed to install sierra, i turned on scanning entries so that I could find the install partition... and it didn't hang any more. So no need for any of this now.

 

[patstr]

That's awesome! Thanks for the fast response! How did you even get to discovering the names for the drives if you couldn't boot with them connected? ;-) I can't remember what mine are titled...

Hi! I have the same problem and will try this. I only have two discs in my raid, so I can get around it by removing the power cable to one drive, and then when the apple logo comes on, I insert the power cable to the drive again. Not the safest method I know , but it is the only way to access my raid.

 

[patstr]

I believe all this is a moot point now. The new version of Clover that I just downloaded and installed to install sierra, i turned on scanning entries so that I could find the install partition... and it didn't hang any more. So no need for any of this now.

Hi! What version of Clover is that? I did my install on Dec 23 and have this problem.
Cheers

 

[benjackson]

Hi! What version of Clover is that? I did my install on Dec 23 and have this problem.
Cheers

Well perhaps it isn't fixed then. I do know that it's not for ALL software RAIDS. Meaning, it's usually only RAIDs that have errors. I recently bought new hard drives and made sure everything was working perfectly with no errors. So maybe that's why mine is working better. Yes, mine was installed around Dec 23 too. Sorry about that. But this thread shows you how to workaround the issue.