- Joined
- Jul 24, 2015
- Messages
- 2,191
- Motherboard
- MSI H81i
- CPU
- i5-4570
- Graphics
- RX 580
EFI partitions are formatted as certain FAT (MS-DOS) file systems. Use FAT32. Apart from being FAT, they have a special GPT GUID that identifies them as being EFI partitions (C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B). This is not required by your firmware but operating systems may treat partitions differently with/without it so use partition type 'EFI System Partition' when creating these things.What format do you use for you EFI partitions ?
3) is ext4 ; 4) is HFS ; 5) Is Swap ; but EFI1 and EFI2 ???
macOS installs no bootloader. You install it manually with the Clover installer (and add an entry to the UEFI boot menu manually to complete the installation)- Linux will install it's bootloader - grub? - in EFI1 by default and we manually move it to EFI2
- MacOS will also install it's bootloader - clover? - in EFI1, and we let it there
macOS install process does not involve EFI partitions so won't affect any of them. Booting GRUB is handled by your firmware, GRUB is installed to an EFI partition and there is an entry in the UEFI boot menu pointing to its location (when you install GRUB the entry is created as part of the installation, unlike when you install Clover and you must add the entry yourself).I want to do a clean install of MacOS
-the install process
- won't affect the partition 2)EFI2, 3)LinuxOs and 5)Linux Swap
- but it'll change 1)EFI1
- if for some reason I don't go all the way down and do not install clover on 1)EFI1, will I be able to boot in linux and how ?
If as part of installing Linux you install GRUB, GRUB gets installed to a 'vendor' folder on an EFI partition. If you are installing e.g. the same distribution to the same EFI partition the same vendor folder will be used e.g. /EFI/UBUNTU, /EFI/FEDORA etc. other vendor folders e.g. EFI/MICROSOFT, EFI/CLOVER will not be touched. Other UEFI boot menu entries e.g. 'Microsoft Boot Manager', 'Clover' will not be touched. Depending on how GRUB is installed a new entry may be created in the UEFI boot menu or an existing one may be updated.- I want to do a clean install of Linux
- the install process
- won't affect the partition 2)EFI2, 4)MacOs (and 5)Linux Swap)
- but it'll change 1)EFI1
- once I'm done I'll be able to boot in Linux from 1)EFI1, but not anymore on MacOS
- but if I want to boot in MacOS, I'll have
- to duplicate 1)EFI1 in 2)EFI2 and clear 1)EFI1
- boot with a my macos-install thumbdrive and install clover again, into 1)EFI1.
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