MacOS not booting from local drive

[blyte]

I've been following this guide on github to install Mojave 10.14.4 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T440p laptop. To make flash drive installer I formatted the USB, transferred Mojave installer to USB, mounted EFI of flash drive, and copied EFI folder from github repository to EFI partition. BIOS settings the following, as per guide:

• Security > Security Chip: must be Disabled,
• Memory Protection > Execution Prevention: must be Enabled,
• Internal Device Access > Bottom Cover Tamper Detection: must be Disabled,
• Anti-Theft > Current Setting: must be Disabled,
• Anti-Theft > Computrace > Current Setting: must be Disabled,
• Secure Boot > Secure Boot: must be Disabled.

In Startup menu, set the following options:

• UEFI/Legacy Boot: Both,
• UEFI/Legacy Priority: UEFI First,
• CSM Support: Yes.

I can boot from the flash drive and format local drive for installation, macos successfully installs. Now I am at the part where I copy usb efi folder to local efi partition, and kexts to /library/extensions/. I run into a permission problem when running sudo kextcache command, so I enter some repair commands that I got from this page. I have tried 2 times with this setup and it refused to boot from the local drive; it goes to "boot from recovery" instead. The only times it has booted from drive was during the install when it rebooted automatically. It occurs to me as I'm posting this that I could try running repair commands on the efi's kexts, so I have do so. I'm don't want to sit through another install so I don't dare restart to see if that works. Attached to this post are some screenshots of the post-install steps, and contents of the efi folders currently—system specs are my profile. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Oh, and I'm new to all this if you couldn't tell.

 

[wstrohm]

Strongly suspect that "CSM Support" should be disabled (NO). It is only for legacy BIOS (not UEFI) and might be screwing you up.

 

[blyte]

Strongly suspect that "CSM Support" should be disabled (NO). It is only for legacy BIOS (not UEFI) and might be screwing you up.

Tried it; didn't work.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Not a Desktop - Moved to Laptop Support.

 

[Shiitaki]

I've been following this guide on github to install Mojave 10.14.4 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T440p laptop. To make flash drive installer I formatted the USB, transferred Mojave installer to USB, mounted EFI of flash drive, and copied EFI folder from github repository to EFI partition. BIOS settings the following, as per guide:

• Security > Security Chip: must be Disabled,
• Memory Protection > Execution Prevention: must be Enabled,
• Internal Device Access > Bottom Cover Tamper Detection: must be Disabled,
• Anti-Theft > Current Setting: must be Disabled,
• Anti-Theft > Computrace > Current Setting: must be Disabled,
• Secure Boot > Secure Boot: must be Disabled.

In Startup menu, set the following options:

• UEFI/Legacy Boot: Both,
• UEFI/Legacy Priority: UEFI First,
• CSM Support: Yes.

I can boot from the flash drive and format local drive for installation, macos successfully installs. Now I am at the part where I copy usb efi folder to local efi partition, and kexts to /library/extensions/. I run into a permission problem when running sudo kextcache command, so I enter some repair commands that I got from this page. I have tried 2 times with this setup and it refused to boot from the local drive; it goes to "boot from recovery" instead. The only times it has booted from drive was during the install when it rebooted automatically. It occurs to me as I'm posting this that I could try running repair commands on the efi's kexts, so I have do so. I'm don't want to sit through another install so I don't dare restart to see if that works. Attached to this post are some screenshots of the post-install steps, and contents of the efi folders currently—system specs are my profile. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Oh, and I'm new to all this if you couldn't tell.

First you don't install kexts in macOS anymore. If you need a kext you put it Other in the Clover folder in the EFI partition.

I run in to this problem all the time, it boots fine from USB but when you copy the EFI from the USB to the EFI of the internal drive it doesn't show up as a bootable device. I solve this by booting to a UEFI shell and manually defining the BOOTX64.efi in /Boot as a bootable target. I have to do this if the bios resets or firmware updates.

Here is the website where I found the instructions to do this.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - ArchWiki

wiki.archlinux.org

The first time it can be a lot to wade through but it's not really that hard. The shell I use is found in the tools folder in Clover. Not everyone has the shell in the tools folder. Not hard to find though. At the Clover boot menu you can press help and then select the shell. Sometimes it's even a option on the main menu next to restart.

Don't worry about the boot order, you can boot in to the bios and change it later, you just need it defined as bootable first. Conveniently you can give it a nice name while you are at it.

 

[blyte]

First you don't install kexts in macOS anymore. If you need a kext you put it Other in the Clover folder in the EFI partition.

I run in to this problem all the time, it boots fine from USB but when you copy the EFI from the USB to the EFI of the internal drive it doesn't show up as a bootable device. I solve this by booting to a UEFI shell and manually defining the BOOTX64.efi in /Boot as a bootable target. I have to do this if the bios resets or firmware updates.

Here is the website where I found the instructions to do this.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - ArchWiki

wiki.archlinux.org

The first time it can be a lot to wade through but it's not really that hard. The shell I use is found in the tools folder in Clover. Not everyone has the shell in the tools folder. Not hard to find though. At the Clover boot menu you can press help and then select the shell. Sometimes it's even a option on the main menu next to restart.

Don't worry about the boot order, you can boot in to the bios and change it later, you just need it defined as bootable first. Conveniently you can give it a nice name while you are at it.

Very helpful post! Indeed, there was not BOOTX64.efi showing up in boot order when I did the bcfg boot dump. So I added BOOTX64.efi from my local drive...


(sorry for image quality, no access to mobile atm)

But then I try booting from this device (macOSboot) ...


(is clearly there as you can see)


I think I have a rational explanation for this; God almighty does not see it fit for me to have a hackintosh at this time! So I guess I am done here.

 

[blyte]

So I left the laptop alone overnight and when I came back to it, it was on the bios boot menu for some reason. I restart the computer and somehow now I am able to boot from drive. I guess that must have done the trick; not sure why it didn't work immediately after adding the boot option. Big thanks to Shiitaki for helping me solve this!

Edit: err, kinda solved. I just realized that I didn't copy the EFI folder to EFI partition this time. For some reason, copying the folder is what is preventing the boot from working. It booted from boot.efi in /system/library/coreservices, not bootx64.efi (haven't added it as boot option)


Not sure what to do from here.

edit 2: and now I HAVE copied efi folder and it's still booting, albeit from boot.efi in /system/ I mentioned. gonna see if everything else is in order now