Clover doesn't work / Chimera broken

[oey192]

[Solved] Clover doesn't work / Chimera broken

Why hello there!

I am having difficulties booting from my internal hard drive after upgrading to El Capitan and switching from Chimera to Clover. Thankfully I can still boot my machine via the Unibeast USB stick, but that is a sub-optimal solution and not something I want to do long-term.



EDIT: Issue solved. I have left the wall of text below for posterity in case others encounter similar issues.



Here are the steps I went through while updating (these are not the most optimal steps. They are just what I did to get to the stuck state I was in):

0. Tested that the UniBeast USB installer would boot. It did
1. Backed up and removed Chimera files (/Extra, /System/Library/Extensions/<stuff>, etc)
2. Partially removed Chimera (That is, I removed /boot but didn't adjust my partition in Disk Utility to clear the MBR)
3. Setup BIOS options per the install thread (pretty sure my motherboard is a 7 series)
4. Installed El Capitan 10.11.3 on my Yosemite (10.10.4) system disk
5. Repeated step 3 because it failed while updating system extensions. The second install went off without a hitch
6. Booted the updated El Capitan install via the USB. No problems here
7. Ran MultiBeast. Used UEFI mode and installed a few other drivers appropriate for my system
8. Shutdown computer, removed USB stick, turned computer on.
9. Encountered "boo1: error" screen
10. Rebooted with USB inserted, used El Capitan's Disk Utility to clear MBR (dragged handle on pie chart a little ways [Apply button activated], then typed in 120 into size box which changed to 119.8something upon pressing return [original value was 119.8something])
11. Ran MultiBeast again
12. Shutdown, removed USB, turned computer on, ran into boot1 error again
13. Repeated steps 10-12 several times


This is the "boot 1" error I'm getting.
boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: done
boo1: error

This error is coming from the Chimera bootloader that apparently doesn't want to get deleted from my startup disk. It's running into the boot1 error because I removed /boot. When I put /boot back, I stop getting this error and instead get a basic Chimera bootloader screen. This bootloader screen is not actually able to boot the Mac OS X install, though, so this does not fix the overall problem of Clover not working.

When I run MultiBeast to install Clover, it backs up the current EFI and puts it in /EFI-Backups. I also see some files get quickly created and removed (or created and then hidden) in /
It mounts an EFI partition which has a weird display name. In the Finder sidebar, it is called EFI. However, the full path to its mount point is /Volumes/ESP. The EFI partition does not show up in the Disk Utility but it does show up when using `diskutil list` on the command line. (It also shows up in commands like `df`)

Also, in my BIOS settings, there is now a boot order option for "Mac OS X" which seems to be the EFI partition for my startup disk.

Upon booting to my startup disk from the USB, the EFI partition is not mounted but does continue to show as a partition in `diskutil list`. From what I have read on the Internets, this is expected behavior.

If I do mount that partition to /Volumes/EFI, there are 3 folders inside the Volumes/EFI/EFI folder:
APPLE (23.9 MB)
BOOT (1.2 MB)
CLOVER (7 MB)
and Clover_Install_Log.txt

I do not see any errors in the Clover_Install_log.txt file

This is how I know the Clover bootloader on my system drive is not working:
I have a Windows install on a separate disk (P0 in my BIOS). My startup disk is P1. If I set the boot order to:
Mac OS X
P1 (system drive)
P0 (Windows drive)

I get the boot1 error

If I set the boot order to:
Mac OS X
P0 (Windows)
P1 (system drive)

it boots into Windows
This means that it's failing to boot the Mac OS X partition/EFI sector/whatever-the-heck-that-is and moving on to the next option


I know it should be fine to have Chimera installed alongside Clover, so it's not imperative that I figure out how to actually remove it, but it would be nice.
However, my real question here is: how do I get Clover to work??

Thanks in advance!



Note: While booting from USB, I intermittently ran into this issue, or something very similar, but I have been able to get around it by trying again a few times. Also, I think that unplugging my Thunderbolt/FireWire 800 adapter may have made the issue go away

------------------------------------------------------------
System specs:
Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH motherboard (this is a 7-series motherboard, correct?)
Intel i7 3770K CPU
No dedicated graphics, just Intel 4000HD graphics from the CPU
120 GB SanDisk SSD
3TB Seagate HDD

All peripherals other than keyboard, mouse, ethernet, display, and USB installer are unplugged

I have never updated motherboard's BIOS. I recently recall seeing something that said the BIOS was installed in July of 2012

About the drives:
120 GB SSD is labeled as P1 in BIOS
Mac OS X 10.11.3 is installed on the SSD (was 10.10.4 before upgrade)
`diskutil list` shows 3 partitions for the SSD
EFI EFI (s1)
Apple_HFS <nameOfSystemDrive> (s2)
Apple_Boot Recovery HD (s3)

3 TB HDD is labeled as P0 in BIOS
Windows 7 is installed on the smaller partition of the drive
`diskutil list` shows 3 partitions for the HDD
EFI EFI (s1)
Microsoft Basic Data <blank/untitled> (s2)
Apple_HFS <nameOfDataDrive> (s3)


The system drive is 19.2 GB
The untitled Windows partition of the data drive is 300 GB
The other (named) partition of the data drive is 2.7 TB


Note: The EFI partitions on both drives are both 209.7 MB, as is the EFI partition on the UniBeast installer USB stick

 

[oey192]

Hang on. I just found a link for the big list of El Capitan problems. I'll bump this thread if nothing on there works

(http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...st-solutions-el-capitan-install-problems.html)

 

[oey192]

After looking at the list of problems for a short while, my best guess is that my BIOS is too old and that is causing problems. I will try to update it when I get the chance.
The problem list says to boot from options that say UEFI: <drive name>
I noticed that the USB installer shows up this way but the Mac OS X item does not. I was not able to find an option in my BIOS that referenced "CSM"


I also just tried something different: I disabled all boot options in the bios except for the "Mac OS X" one. It then booted to Clover (on the internal drive; USB was removed), and tried to boot the main El Capitan install. It failed with the "OS not found" circle with slash. From there I tried booting again, this time in single user verbose mode. That way booted just fine, of course, not giving any error message, so I typed "exit" and it booted the system normally. No problems. Obviously I don't want to have to boot my computer this way all the time, but at least it's progress.

I'll continue to investigate the big list of problems regarding the "OS not found" issue, but for now, it would be nice to know if it's likely that updating my BIOS will fix the issue of needing to disable all boot options to get Clover to work

 

[woktov]

This is the "boot 1" error I'm getting.
boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: done
boo1: error

I am also getting this error and have not been able to fix it

 

[oey192]

woktov,

Are you getting that error with the Chimera bootloader or the Clover bootloader? If you're getting it with Chimera it usually means that the /boot file is missing (or possibly that it's corrupted or has incorrect permissions). If you're using Clover I have no idea what could be causing that

 

[oey192]

[Solved] Clover doesn't work / Chimera broken

I was finally able to get everything to work.

For reference, my old BIOS version was F4. The current version of the BIOS for the Z77X-UP5-TH board is F12


While using the old version of the BIOS, I used Clover's verbose mode to determine what was giving me the "prohibited" sign (circle with a slash through it). It was the "OsxAptioDrvFix" problem mentioned on the "Big List of Solutions for El Capitan Install Problems" linked above.
I read several articles about the problem and saw that one person had solved the problem by using OsxAptioDrvFix instead of OsxAptioDrvFix2, but then ultimately had to update his BIOS to fully fix the issue. I never tried using OsxAptioDrvFix as OsxAptioDrvFix2 was present and I didn't look hard enough for a reliable version of OsxAptioDrvFix, but I decided to try just updating my BIOS and see if that helped since it seemed like that might be needed to remove the need to disable all but one boot option.

I updated my BIOS from version F4 to version F12, and everything has worked fine since. I now see "UEFI: " options for my bootable drives in the BIOS, and Clover boots just fine even when other boot options are enabled (but placed lower than it in boot order priority).
Note: I did not have to enable UEFI only mode in the BIOS to get the "UEFI: " options to show up for the bootable drives, but I have read that that is necessary for some motherboards or some BIOS versions