Sierra - "Mounting EFI Failed" - Attempted After Time Machine Recovery

[xWaVeXeVaWx]

Background: Attempted High Sierra multiple times, failed all those times, and am reverting back to my Time Machine backup. Installed Sierra and then recovered from Time Machine via Recovery Mode. Have a version 6 motherboard so I use Legacy Mode.

1. macOS 10.12.6
2. Multibeast 9.0.1 and 9.2.1
3. Choices
   1. Quick Start > Legacy Boot Mode
   2. Drivers > Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC889
   3. Drivers > Disk > 3rd Part SATA
   4. Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC v6.25-333-g05e0f4be.1759
   5. Drivers > Network > Realtek > RealtekRTL8111 v2.0.0
   6. Drivers > USB > 3rd Party USB 3.0
   7. Customize > System Definitions > iMac > iMac 17,1
4. Attached
5. Not sure what you mean by "for the choices you are installing" so I included the whole file.

I currently have Clover_v2.4k_r4449 installed so I can boot up as usual. I mainly need MultiBeast for my other drivers, especially audio.

Thanks everyone!

 

[MacMan]

Failure to mount the EFI is always due to the EFI partition not being formatted by macOS.

Formatting and partitioning the destination disk using an OS other than macOS is not supported.

 

[Deleted member 188658]

@MacMan

Hope you see this thread/post.

I am

1. macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
2. Multibeast 10.3.0 (2)
3. trying to install audio: Drivers> Audio > Realtek ALCxxx > ALC1150
4. destination file system APFS 10.13.6 version
5. Multibeast.log in compressed folder
6. Install.log in compressed folder
7. Agree that it may be an EFI partition format issue. I used "diskutil reformat disk0s1" to erase everything on EFI partition (as too many changes to track) and then ran the CloverConfigurator to load a latest version of Clover to the EFI partition, and then copy back my config.plist, CLOVER/patched, CLOVER/kext/Other and CLOVER/drivers64efi folders. Worked like a charm, I have dual booting and no extraneous disk mounts to confuse my Clover boot menu. Hackintosh seems good except for lost audio. Anyway I have put the output of "diskutil info /dev/disk0s1" into the compressed folder and called the file EFI_disk_info.txt
8. I have compressed all and attached.
9. So if using diskutil reformat <disk> on this very OSX / system is wrong way to format EFI, what is the correct way? I'm using it from the terminal shell, as I can't get the DiskUtil App to show me the EFI partition. Anyway the EFI_disk_info.txt shows the partition to be MS-DOS / EFI.
10. I noticed that there is the EFI partition on the Windows Disk. I have added the full diskutil list command to the compressed files. Is the problem that MB is mixing up the appropriate EFI partition? The OSX partition is on /dev/disk2*. I have added a text file called ALL_disks.txt to the zip folder for you to view.

Thank you for your support.

 

[MacMan]

Install.log has no relevant data.

In Terminal run "diskutil list" to get the device name for the disk that is a "(internal, physical)" and has as slice 3 as "Apple_APFS Container". In the disk list you sent me it's /dev/disk2 but can change upon reboots. So check if it's still the same or it's a different device name.

Then in Terminal if the device name didn't change otherwise change the device name to the new name but keep the s1 and run this command:

sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk2s1

If it mounts the EFI partition try running MultiBeast again, if it fails then the only thing is to wipe the disk and start again without installing Windows.

 

[Deleted member 188658]

I removed the Windows GPT disk when I restarted.

I repeated "diskuti list" - output is attached in ALL_disks2.txt. The drive has been mapped to disk0.

I

% sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

And it successfully mounted the EFI partition. I ran Multibeast again. It failed again, to mount EFI partition.

This OSX disk, now disk0, represents 5 years of Hackintosh work, now eventually at HS 10.13.6. What do you mean wipe the disk again and start over? Why do you refer to the Windows disk - which represents 8+ years of history.

There must be some way of getting / faking Multibeast into mounting the EFI drive? And if I have mounted the drive from the Terminal - why is Multibeast trying and failing to mount it again?

The useless install.log is attached and called install2.log. The Multibeast.log retains the same name. The "diskuti info" of the EFI partition is EFI_disk_info2.txt. All in the multibeastFailure2.zip file.

Thanks

 

[Deleted member 188658]

Ping / Bump.

@Macmac any comments?

Would it be possible for me to get the manual instructions to load the Realtek 1150 Codec kext, and install the appropriate .zlib files? I believe the edits I have in the CLOVER/config.plist are already there as I used to have audio working with this SSD/system before I had to replace my mobo.

 

[MacMan]

MultiBeast 10.4 was released today. One of it's new features is additional debug messages in the MultiBeast when mounting the EFI partition.

Try this version to see what is logged.

 

[Deleted member 188658]

I tried the 10.4.0 MB version. It did not install. I looked at the Multibeast.log and saw there was one extra line of debug, Selecting Disk <name of boot disk>
then there was the usual fail to mount EFI partition message.

Not satisfied to leave well alone, I had noticed from 'diskutil list' that there was a partition disk0s2 that had a NEGATIVE size. So I attempted to 'resize', 'repair' and 'verify' that volume, disk0s2. All these diskutil commands failed with invalid partition size messages. Getting annoyed I decide to try the 'diskutil eraseVolume Free\ Space FOO disk0s2' command. Erase started but did not stop, it just hung. I Ctrl-C the process and noticed that various terminal commands were failing. I tried to reboot, but the reboot command did nothing. I hit reset and now have a dead brick for a disk.

I booted my USB installer and used the diskutil tool to see the partitions still exist and that I can mount and see the filesystem.

Can you recommend a USB bootable tool that will copy this SSD to a backup disk, so I can save the contents, and then re-start a fresh install on the SSD? I have a TimeMachine backup around but it's a couple of months old and of 10.13.4 OS version.

I understand the stupid decision I made to try remove the invalid partition. There are not enough swear words to express my frustration with myself.