Macbook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015): QubesOS R4.0 installer doesn't use existing /dev/sda1 EFI System Partition

[pruflyos]

Qubes OS version:

R4.0

Affected component(s):

Qubes OS R4.0 Installer

---

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

• flashed Qubes-R4.0-x86_64.iso using Etcher (https://etcher.io)
• freed (50GB) at the end of my Macbook's disk
• did not install rEFInd. R4.0 should work with the standard UEFI manager (holding down option key) as well, right???
• plug-in USB thumb drive and hold down option key during boot
• select EFI Boot
• screen goes dark but after waiting 20 seconds Qubes 4.0 installer starts fine
• in the installer overview: keep the default automatic partitioning
• begin installation

Expected behavior:

• /dev/sda1 (EFI System Partition) should have been mounted to /boot/efi
• Qubes entry should have been added to /dev/sda1

Actual behavior:

For some reason the Qubes installer creates a new 200MB EFI partion (/dev/sda6 in my case) and creates a Qubes entry in this partition:

INFO program: Running... efibootmgr -c -w -L Qubes -d /dev/sda -p 6 -l \EFI\qubes\xen.efi

Of course, my Macbook isn't able to boot Qubes after I finish installation and hold down the Option key, because the Macbook EFI manager looks in /dev/sda1 for available systems, but Qubes was added to /dev/sda6.

And that's exactly what's happening, after qubes installation is complete and I reboot my Macbook while holding down the Option key, Qubes is not shown as an option. I can't boot the installed Qubes 4.0.

General notes:

• /dev/sda1 still has 169M of free space on my system, so that can't be the reason why the Qubes installer isn't using it. The EFI partition the Qubes installer creates (/dev/sda6) only uses 66M after installation is finished. So this would fit on /dev/sda1, no need to create a new EFI partition, right? Or is there another reason?

---

Related issues:

• QubesOS/qubes-installer-qubes-os#20
• #3784

[nsuchy]

Does this bug affect people erasing the entire disk and starting anew? Or just if you want to dual boot with macOS and keep your existing EFI partition?

CC: @andrewdavidwong @pruflyos

[nsuchy]

Does this bug affect people erasing the entire disk and starting anew? Or just if you want to dual boot with macOS and keep your existing EFI partition?

CC: @andrewdavidwong @pruflyos

[pruflyos]

Does this bug affect people erasing the entire disk and starting anew?

When you erase the entire disk, Qubes 4.0 doesn't boot after installation. I guess the issue is the following:
Qubes installer creates a 200MB partition for UEFI of type Standard Partition with Linux HFS+ ESP as the file system.
Ubuntu 18.04 on the other hand (which boots fine after installation) creates a 512MB partition using EFI System Partition as the file system.
If I try to replicate the Ubuntu layout using manual partitioning in the Qubes 4.0 installer, it won't let me install and complains with:

Error checking storage configuration.

No vaild boot loader target device found. See below for details.
For a UEFI installation, you must include and EFI System Partition an a GPT-formatted disk, mounted at /boot/efi.

So I guess this is a bug. Although I manually created a partition of type EFI System Partition and set the mount point to /boot/efi I get the above error and can't install. And the automatic partitioning uses the wrong file system type so Qubes 4.0 installs but won't boot.

So neither automatic partitioning nor manual partitioning lead to a bootable Qubes on a Macbook Pro 2015.

[pruflyos]

Does this bug affect people erasing the entire disk and starting anew?

When you erase the entire disk, Qubes 4.0 doesn't boot after installation. I guess the issue is the following:
Qubes installer creates a 200MB partition for UEFI of type Standard Partition with Linux HFS+ ESP as the file system.
Ubuntu 18.04 on the other hand (which boots fine after installation) creates a 512MB partition using EFI System Partition as the file system.
If I try to replicate the Ubuntu layout using manual partitioning in the Qubes 4.0 installer, it won't let me install and complains with:

Error checking storage configuration.

No vaild boot loader target device found. See below for details.
For a UEFI installation, you must include and EFI System Partition an a GPT-formatted disk, mounted at /boot/efi.

So I guess this is a bug. Although I manually created a partition of type EFI System Partition and set the mount point to /boot/efi I get the above error and can't install. And the automatic partitioning uses the wrong file system type so Qubes 4.0 installs but won't boot.

So neither automatic partitioning nor manual partitioning lead to a bootable Qubes on a Macbook Pro 2015.