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Zucca
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 08, 2024 9:16 am    Post subject: Apple ARM - partitioning - removing macOS Reply with quote

Hi.
As some of you know already I've bought MacBook Air M2.
I'm trying to understand the partitioning. I've successfully booted Gentoo live image on this hardware, but I've left around 100GB for macOS... which I don't use at all.

Can I remove macOS, but leave recovery OS there?
I managed to install the minimal UEFI environment via recovery OS using the Asahi Linux script.

I thought if I could just delete the macOS by using apple's (gui) disk manager via recovery OS, and then give all the remaining free space to my Gentoo installation?

EDIT01:

EDIT02:
    Warning wrote:
    Warning: Some of Apple’s tools do not like unsorted partitions in the GPT partition table. Since you need to keep the first and last partition in place, that means most disk management operations from Linux will append partitions to the GPT, and put it out of order. Make sure you fix this. With the fdisk Linux command this can be done with x (go into expert mode) → f (fix partitions order) → r (return to main menu) → w (write changes and exit).
    ... So I will definitely have one EFI partition and one partition dedicated to lvm, so I don't need to worry too much.


EDIT03:
    Well... I got rid of the correct partitions/containers. I left the first, last and the macOS disk image intact. The first and last are essential to boot and to be able to boot into recovery OS. I guess the macOS disk image isn't needed because it contains only the installer.
    But at this point the Asahi installed wouldn't continue after the first key press. It complained that the Mac didn't have any bootable macOSes. The thing I just wanted. The Asahi installer needs a macOS to be able to authenticate when modifying some boot parameters, I guess.
    Now the question is can I remove the macOS container after I have booted Gentoo live medium? I wish to be able to get along only with the Recovery OS (first and last container/partition).
    I'm currently reinstalling macOS... That'll take hours...

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Zucca
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 08, 2024 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The final answer seems to be "no". And it really boils down to the main user authentication, the user which is the (main) macOS administrator/root:
cAtloVeR9998 wrote:
Re: Distribution, Apple has long maintained a known CDN which macOS pulls OS images if your OS get's corrupted. This CDN is non-authenticated and eventually Asahi will be able to pull updates directly.

Re: RecoveryOS vs your main macOS install, the main macOS install is by default the "machine ower" in regards to the SEP, so no, RecoveryOS cannot directly replace it.
and
marcan42 wrote:
It's not firmware as in /lib/firmware, that problem is already solved (legally, we designed an entire bespoke standard to deal with this, including a specification, initramfs components, a kernel patch, and more). The problem is your system firmware. Getting the files is easy, we know how to do that, but nobody knows how to install them without macOS to do it.

Plus as I said the SEP machine owner user management. If you delete macOS, you are deleting the credential store for the only administrator as far as the machine is concerned. That means no more managing the Asahi install from the machine's perspective. Which means no bootloader updates, no recovery, no reinstalls, etc.

We tell people not to delete macOS for very good reasons. Yes, we know lots of people want to delete it. If this were an easy problem to solve we would have solved it already.

With 256GB of storage that really sucks. I do hope there will be fix to this eventually in the future.

Like I've said before: Apple didn't make this easy.
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-systemd -logind -elogind seatd

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Banana
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How about booting from an external USB drive? An isntall on a fast nvme and USB3 should be possible, so you can keep the osx alone.
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Zucca
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 9:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Banana wrote:
How about booting from an external USB drive?
I would like to avoid going to "dongle town".
I'll settle for minimal macOS alongside of my Gentoo install.
I'll hope Asahi folks eventually work this problem out.

I've read https://leo3418.github.io/asahi-wiki-build/introduction-to-apple-silicon/ and the current Apple platform is fascinating. In a good way. Based on what I've read, booting other OSes is supported, but Apple essentially just gives the platform for you to play with without much instructions.
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init=/sbin/openrc-init
-systemd -logind -elogind seatd

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Banana
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 12:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do hope the snapdragon https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1170594.html will become a good alternative to this.
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Zucca
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 1:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It'll probably will do, but I have doubts what will display offerings be.
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flysideways
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2024 3:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is also this guide, didn't know if you had found it yet.

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Installing-Gentoo-with-LiveCD

I've followed the Asahi project off and on for a while, but I'm not yet ready for that on this laptop. It's my primary computer. A VM in Fusion or UTM is fine for now.
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