Optiplex 7010 Troubleshooting: Catalina Boot failure

[gatorback]

A Catalina 1TB Samsung disk has worked well for 8+ months in a pair of Optiplex 7010s: one is at home and the other at remote site. This disk is carried for use between the two sites. Catalina, Optiplex 7010

The disk was working fine this morning in the home site and was taken to the remote site. At the remote site: the disk booted and MacOS option was presented in the clover menu. The spinning pinwheel was presented at the MacOS logon page, so a reboot was forced. Thereafter, it would boot through clover, however, after MacOS tried to boot, the machine would shut down.

The disk was returned to the home Optiplex and photos were taken of the error message. I am seeking to understand how to interpret the cause of the boot failure and possible remedies. Diagnostic questions are appreciated: thank you.

 

[Gigamaxx]

A 1TB Samsung disk has worked well for 8+ months. A pari of Optiplex 7010s: one is planted in a local and the other remote site. This disk is carried for use between the two sites. Catalina, Optiplex 7010

The disk was working fine this morning in the local site and was taken to the remote site and would both through Clover. The spinning pinwheel was presented at the logon page, so a reboot was forced. Thereafter it would boot through clover, however, after OS X tried to boot, the machine would shut down.

The disk was returned to the local site and photos were taken. I am seeking to understand how to interpret the cause of the boot failure and possible remedies. Diagnostic questions are appreciated: thank you

View attachment 515274View attachment 515275

fsck error.
Clover boot menu go to Options tab.
Go to boot arg. Add -s
Boot when it stops at root# type in without quotation marks.
root# “fsck -fy”
Next root # “mount -uw”
Next root # “exit”

Give that a try if it works then use disk utility to repair disk and or Hackintool to rebuild caches and repair permissions.

 

[gatorback]

@Gigamaxx: The command line instructions were followed from Clover as well as the disk utility "first aid" (same as "repair disk"?). Problem persists.

The ailing disk was transferred to Optiplex 7010 with a working Catalina disk:

1. the Samsung disk named BLUESKIES and
2. is booted by a disk named PLUTO (Catalina).

The command df -h returns:

% df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk3s5 112Gi 10Gi 28Gi 27% 487924 1169671916 0% /
devfs 196Ki 196Ki 0Bi 100% 679 0 100% /dev
/dev/disk3s1 112Gi 71Gi 28Gi 72% 375209 1169784631 0% /System/Volumes/Data
/dev/disk3s4 112Gi 1.0Gi 28Gi 4% 2 1170159838 0% /private/var/vm
/dev/disk2s1 931Gi 730Gi 188Gi 80% 2070108 9763507332 0% /Volumes/BLUESKIES - Data
/dev/disk2s5 931Gi 11Gi 188Gi 6% 488448 9765088992 0% /Volumes/BLUESKIES
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /System/Volumes/Data/home

I believe that the Samsung disk is /dev/disk2
Likewise, I believe the /dev/disk3 is the working Catalina disk = PLUTO.

The next post shows the results of Disk Utility's First Aid

 

[gatorback]

Disk Utility's "First Aid" returns a checksum error, indicating an invalid fsroot tree.

How to overcome mounting issue presented?

The goal is to understand the root cause(s) of the problem. Any diagnostic questions are appreciated. I would like to understand if I have exhausted the fsck remedies and am ready to move on a second issue to troubleshoot.

Is there a procedure or test to determine the state of caches and permissions? As a newbie, I seek to observe, measure state, remedy and measure state.

 

[Gigamaxx]

Disk Utility's "First Aid" returns a checksum error, indicating an invalid fsroot tree.

View attachment 515319
How to overcome mounting issue presented?

View attachment 515320
The goal is to understand the root cause(s) of the problem. Any diagnostic questions are appreciated. I would like to understand if I have exhausted the fsck remedies and am ready to move on a second issue to troubleshoot.

Is there a procedure or test to determine the state of caches and permissions? As a newbie, I seek to observe, measure state, remedy and measure state.

Kext Wizard is a utility that allows you to select any disk to repair permissions and rebuild caches.

 

[gatorback]

Is this the Kext Wizard Utility in the above posting? https://mac.filehorse.com/download-kext-wizard/

 

[Gigamaxx]

Is this the Kext Wizard Utility in the above posting? https://mac.filehorse.com/download-kext-wizard/

Yes, you can select "Target Disk" which can be one that is not currently booted.

 

[gatorback]

The prescribes steps were performed, however the issue persists.

What additional diagnostics can be performed to determine the root cause of the problem? When all is said and done, I would like to understand why this happened pursuant to prevention of repeating the same failure. Any suggestions for Google keyword searches would also be appreciated. Thank you