MP 7,1 Boot from USB with no SSD?

[DrEGPU]

I'm having trouble getting Linux installed on my Mac Pro 2019 7,1 and thought I'd try installing from the USB to an internal nvme SSD (on a PCIe card). The first go around, grub ruined my Windows bootcamp partiion and tried install itself on the T2 SSD when I specifically made a EFI/ESP partition on the PCI SSD. I thought I'd try removing the Apple SSD's so grub would have no choice but to choose the only SSD available, but I can't get it to boot without the native Apple SSD's. Is that even possible? I have all the security features turned off (no Filevault, no secureboot, etc) and still no luck.

 

[joevt]

After installing Linux, you may need to do some cleanup of the EFI partitions and the boot variables.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Mac Pro 2008 doesn't boot (solved)

I have a MacPro3,1 (2008) with EVGA Nvidia GTX 680 (Mac Edition). I am trying to boot Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after installing it to a partition on one of my internal hard drives. The USB installer is bootable and I used that to do the installing. I can boot into the grub menu by selecting EFI Boot in...

forums.macrumors.com

Did grub actually write something to the bootcamp partition, or did it just replace the bootx64.efi file in a EFI partition? The efi partition should still have all the Windows boot stuff still in the /EFI/Microsoft/Boot folder. bootx64.efi in the /EFI/Boot folder is usually a copy of the bootmgfw.efi file. Linux may change the bootx64.efi file to a copy of it's loader which, in the case of ubuntu, is a copy of the shimx64.efi file in the /EFI/ubuntu folder.

 

[DrEGPU]

After installing Linux, you may need to do some cleanup of the EFI partitions and the boot variables.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Mac Pro 2008 doesn't boot (solved)

I have a MacPro3,1 (2008) with EVGA Nvidia GTX 680 (Mac Edition). I am trying to boot Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after installing it to a partition on one of my internal hard drives. The USB installer is bootable and I used that to do the installing. I can boot into the grub menu by selecting EFI Boot in...

forums.macrumors.com

Did grub actually write something to the bootcamp partition, or did it just replace the bootx64.efi file in a EFI partition? The efi partition should still have all the Windows boot stuff still in the /EFI/Microsoft/Boot folder. bootx64.efi in the /EFI/Boot folder is usually a copy of the bootmgfw.efi file. Linux may change the bootx64.efi file to a copy of it's loader which, in the case of ubuntu, is a copy of the shimx64.efi file in the /EFI/ubuntu folder.

I’m not actually sure what happened. My MP wouldn’t boot normally but holding down option, I could at least boot macos, but not windows. I deleted the Linux and boot folders on EFI partition. That seemed to allow macos to boot normally but I had remove and reinstall windows Bootcamp again.

Thanks for the link! I’ll take a look. I never really bothered to learn about grub, since it never caused me problems until now.

 

[goMac]

The firmware uses a hidden-by-hardware partition on the SSDs. T2 stores it’s entire operating system there. If you remove the SSDs, T2 cannot initialize, the firmware cannot initialize, and the Mac will not boot.

Also why blank SSDs need to be formatted by the restore tool after a swap.

 

[joevt]

You can change the startup disk in the Startup Manager (when you hold the option key at boot) by selecting the item you want to boot (macOS), holding the Control key, and pressing return.

My script at https://gist.github.com/joevt/477fe842d16095c2bfd839e2ab4794ff can show the boot variables.

Did you backup the Linux and boot folders on the EFI partition? Put those back so you can still use Linux.

 

[DrEGPU]

I hadn't installed anything, other than the base Ubuntu. I wiped the partition and am starting over. I seem to be having an issue with one of PCIe cards. It only intermittently is recognized (in either MacOS or Win10). The ubuntu live USB now throws out ACPI errors. Guess it's time for a return...

 

[DrEGPU]

I'm not sure what's going on, but neither the ubuntu nor the PopOS installers work. The PopOS installer just gives me a blank screen and the ubuntu installer gives an UEFI error of some sort. I tried resetting the NVRAM and pulling out some of the SSDs/NVME's. No difference. The last thing I haven't tried is to remove all devices and put the MPX 580 back in and try to install linux to an NVME via a USB-c enclosure and then installing that NVME back inside when installation and setup is complete. The ACPI/BIOS errors are probably my 3x SATA SSD's in the Sonnet J3i storage cage above. The nouveau lines are obviously my 2x nvidia cards. Not sure what everything else means.Any ideas?

Removing the SATA SSD's give shorter but no less serious list of errors:

No "apple-properties" though...