Deleted big sur partition and now Mac only boots into recovery

[dhruveonmars]

Even after I select my Catalina partition as the default, or boot into hard disk selection, my Mac still boots into macOS recovery instead of the OS.
Any ideas?
It still finds my catalina users which is the first screen on macOS recovery.

 

[matram]

There is a change in the boot process for Big Sur, there was a session at wwdc on this topic. I do not know if that would make it impossible for Big Sur firmware to boot a Catalina partition?

Did you try to boot into Catalina before deleting Big Sur?

As the data and system partitions are anyhow separate could you not recover the OS over the network. That should restore the original version your MBP was bought with which you could then upgrade as you see fit?

 

[dhruveonmars]

There is a change in the boot process for Big Sur, there was a session at wwdc on this topic. I do not know if that would make it impossible for Big Sur firmware to boot a Catalina partition?

Did you try to boot into Catalina before deleting Big Sur?

As the data and system partitions are anyhow separate could you not recover the OS over the network. That should restore the original version your MBP was bought with which you could then upgrade as you see fit?

Yeah, I've actually mostly been using the Catalina partition because I didn't have the time to reinstall everything I needed.

I tried booting with Safe Mode first, but that didn't work.

After booting and resetting the NVRAM and PRAM (opt-cmd-P-R), it booted into the OS, and got to the login screen. Hopefully I don't need to do this on every boot, though the Big Sur GM should be around the corner.



Hopefully this helps anyone else who might do the same