<< Solved >> Clover idiot question... what does installer really do?

[Tazling]

I did google quite a lot, but didn't find an answer. Lots of How-Tos on making a USB stick (I know how to do that)... but no clue as to what Clover installer really does.

So, as I guess we all know, there's this installer with a name like (current version) Clover_v2.5k_r5103.pkg

And if you run it, like any MacOS installer it will present you with a few choices including "change install location", then you press a Start button and it... well, it Does Something.

The obviously visible thing it does is create a default, minimalist EFI folder on the EFI partition of the target disk. But does it do more than that?

The reason I ask is that when I CC Clone my boot disk to a nearly identical disk (both are SSDs), then manually copy the boot disk's EFI folder to the clone's EFI partition, the resulting clone disk is not bootable. That is, my BIOS doesn't see it as a bootable device.

But if I first use the Clover pkg installer app, then replace its minimalist EFI folder with the working EFI folder from my real boot disk, it seems that my BIOS can see the clone as a bootable device. So I'm thinking that Clover is doing something more than just creating a default EFI folder, but so far I have not been able to find out what. There used to be a Clover wiki (it comes up in google searches: https://clover-wiki.zetam.org/Installation) which might have explained everything, but it seems to be kaputt.

The other possibility is that my setup is just plain unstable (ASUS BIOS, two internal SSDs, multiple EFI partitions) and the confusingly inconsistent results I'm getting are not related to whether I use the Clover installer or not.

 

[Going Bald]

Clover installer creates an EFI folder in the EFI partition of the drive you select if you have select install in ESP in the Clover options. You can install more than a minimal EFI folder by checking boxes in the options for what you want to install. Clover installer also makes the drive bootable when you run it. Just copying the EFI folder from USB to SSD will not make the SSD bootable.
For a basic guide to Clover see https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/clover-basics-and-switching-advice.171680/

 

[kylec]

With UEFI (which nearly everyone is using now), copying over the files does make the drive bootable. However there are a couple other things the installer does. You're supposed to install the RC scripts to your boot volume- I'm not sure if this is only for emulated NVRAM or if it does other stuff too. Also, the bdmesg binary gets installed, so that you can check Clover boot messages.

I often use pkgutil --expand and cpio to get at the contents of the installer package, if all I need is one of the .EFI files or something like that. You could use Pacifist for that, too.

 

[Shiitaki]

I did google quite a lot, but didn't find an answer. Lots of How-Tos on making a USB stick (I know how to do that)... but no clue as to what Clover installer really does.

So, as I guess we all know, there's this installer with a name like (current version) Clover_v2.5k_r5103.pkg

And if you run it, like any MacOS installer it will present you with a few choices including "change install location", then you press a Start button and it... well, it Does Something.

The obviously visible thing it does is create a default, minimalist EFI folder on the EFI partition of the target disk. But does it do more than that?

The reason I ask is that when I CC Clone my boot disk to a nearly identical disk (both are SSDs), then manually copy the boot disk's EFI folder to the clone's EFI partition, the resulting clone disk is not bootable. That is, my BIOS doesn't see it as a bootable device.

But if I first use the Clover pkg installer app, then replace its minimalist EFI folder with the working EFI folder from my real boot disk, it seems that my BIOS can see the clone as a bootable device. So I'm thinking that Clover is doing something more than just creating a default EFI folder, but so far I have not been able to find out what. There used to be a Clover wiki (it comes up in google searches: https://clover-wiki.zetam.org/Installation) which might have explained everything, but it seems to be kaputt.

The other possibility is that my setup is just plain unstable (ASUS BIOS, two internal SSDs, multiple EFI partitions) and the confusingly inconsistent results I'm getting are not related to whether I use the Clover installer or not.

You lost the boot entry in the motherboard UEFI. You can manually add a boot binary using a UEFI shell. My Gigabyte does not have one so I used the UEFI shell in a USB Clover boot stick. It's cryptic and took some time to figure out, but really wasn't that difficult. Your UEFI stores information about what is bootable, and oddly while it will often automatically scans and find bootable things, it did not for. I think this was a result of the bios resetting from a failed overclock. Here is the link I used to boot from Clover.

Update EFI boot entries with UEFI shell

Motivation

blog.stigok.com

btw, the reason I had to do this was because the Clover installer failed with an error.

Nothing about UEFI is really understandable so there are no dumb questions. I would argue EFI is a great idea, then Microsoft became involved and it's suffered in execution. Seriously, there should simply be a place in the GUI where you can enter a boot.efi path.

 

[Tazling]

Thanks all! I would really prefer that the details of the boot process remain opaque and magical but alas it looks like I need to understand them more than I want to (dual booting my Hackie now). So I will read your answers more than once, and when I'm more awake.

I have observed that my BIOS behaves rather strangely wrt the list of boot device priorities. Several times I carefully set UEFI OS (the Mojave boot disk) as priority 1, then Save (which tells me I have not changed any BIOS settings, even though I just changed the boot list) and Reset. Half the time, it seems, I boot straight back into BIOS instead of Clover! And when I look at my boot list again, it's all Disabled.

It can take a lot of fumbling around with the boot list before I finally get Clover. I'm not sure how repeatable it is, but looks like I have to set the Windows Boot Manager off the Mojave disk as priority 1, in order to get Clover to start. Not sure how or why this works... maybe I don't need to know...

However, once I have Clover, I can indeed boot the Windows SSD or the Mojave SSD! so that's pretty exciting.

 

[Tazling]

Solved, here's the answer

UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then?

It's AdamW Essay Time again! If you're looking for something short and snappy, look elsewhere. Kamil Paral kindly informs me I'm a chronic sufferer of Graphomania. Always nice to know what's wrong wit

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