Installer shows incorrect partition sizes, cannot install due to perceived ESP partition size

[itaiferber]

What Happened?

Attempting to install elementary OS 6 fails on my 2019 MacBook Pro, seemingly due to not being able to correctly read partition sizes on the disk. Attempting to install on this machine via the default "Erase Disk and Install" option fails with a "Installing elementary OS 6 Odin failed, possibly due to a hardware error." message, and attempting a "Custom Install" does not allow me to continue.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Boot into macOS Recovery to disable Secure Boot, booting from external partitions, etc.; delete existing partitions from disk
2. Boot into elementary OS 6 installer and attempt to "Erase Disk and Install"
   1. Select the internal 1 TB NVME drive ("Apple SSD AP1024M, /dev/nvme0n1 1.0 TB")
   2. Choose "Don't Encrypt" when prompted (though it doesn't matter — I've tried encrypting before and the failure is the same)
   3. Hit "Could Not Install" error
      Screenshot

      
      I'm not sure whether the "pointer in FFI is null" error is unrelated, correlated, or causative, but the last error produced is related to ESP partition being too small
3. Go back with "Try Installing Again", this time selecting a "Custom Install"
   1. "Modify Partitions" to create a 512 MB EFI partition, 16 GB swap partition, 64 GB root partition, and remaining home partition
      Screenshot

      
   2. See that installer is incorrectly picking up on partition sizes (67.1 MB for EFI, 2.1 GB for swap, 8.6 GB for root, 114.3 GB for home, 875.5 GB unused)
      Screenshot

      
   3. Attempt to select the partitions anyway (installation can't begin because EFI partition is too small)
      Screenshot

      

I've confirmed that booting into Demo Mode on the same drive shows the right partition sizes in GParted, as does booting into a GParted live USB.

Expected Behavior

• "Erase and Install" should have succeeded at blowing away anything on disk and installing the OS
• The partition selector should also show the same partition sizes as "Modify Partitions"

OS Version

6.x (Odin) [elementaryos-6.0-stable.20211005]

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

I re-ran the above steps as-is (including recreating all partitions) this morning (the day after submission) and grabbed journalctl output from demo mode: journal.log

Hardware Info

This is on a 2019 MBP with a 1 TB internal drive and SIP and Secure Boot previously disabled.

[vjr]

67 MB is about 1/8th of 512 MB which leads me to believe this is an issue in the installer/distinst not recognising 4k sector sizes?

[itaiferber]

I re-ran the above steps this morning and added log output from journalctl to the report.

[itaiferber]

@vjr Interesting. I didn't make the connection, but all of the perceived sizes are about 1/8th, + some offset. I'm assuming there's likely no way for me to work around this in the meantime by somehow explicitly telling the installer about the sector size?

[vjr]

I had tried working on a PR to support sector sizes a while back but could not test. The code might have changed a but...

Maybe if I have time this weekend I can revisit to see if I'm able to make any progress

[itaiferber]

@vjr Thanks! I'll keep my machine in this state for now — if you (or someone else) do have time to look into this, I'd be happy to provide any more info, or test out changes.

[vjr]

@itaiferber I've created a draft PR here: #621

I'll try to test (I dont have a 4k disk) maybe in a VM, but you are free to try my branch if you can.

I plan to boot an elementary 6 live ISO, install git and other tools/libraries as mentioned in the branch README notes and build and install the installer executable io.elementary.installer and try to run it.

[vjr]

@itaiferber I've been able to reproduce the problem with a qemu virtual disk with 4k sector size and also able to successfully install using these two branches:

https://github.com/vjr/installer/tree/fix-sector-size
https://github.com/vjr/distinst/tree/fix-sector-size

I had to also patch the distinst tool/library from the pop-os repos to work around the issue.

If you would try it, here are the (convoluted) steps I followed which I've typed from memory, so may not be completely accurate, you'll have to figure out any issues here:

1. Boot the elementary OS live ISO and pick the Try Demo mode to get to the desktop.
2. Open terminal and run the following commands:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt install git elementary-sdk libgnomekbd-dev libpwquality-dev libdistinst-dev
• sudo apt build-dep distinst
• git clone https://github.com/vjr/installer.git
• git clone https://github.com/vjr/distinst.git
• cd distinst
• git checkout fix-sector-size
• make
• sudo make install prefix=/usr
• cd ../installer
• git checkout fix-sector-size
• meson build --prefix=/usr
• cd build
• ninja
• sudo ninja install
• sudo killall io.elementary.installer-daemon
• sudo io.elementary.installer-daemon

3. Now run the installer by clicking the icon in the applications menu (dont run the executable from the terminal) and choose the "custom install" flow.

The "erase and install" option is failing, probably need to further patch for the LVM/default case, will do that later.

Looking forward to hearing back about your results!

[itaiferber]

@vjr Wow, thanks for such quick turnaround on this! I'll give those instructions a shot and let you know what I get.

[itaiferber]

@vjr I followed your instructions, and everything appears to have compiled and installed! Issues I ran into:

• I hadn't checked out fix-vector-size in the installer directory, so initial attempts failed because the installer still didn't show the right info
• Installation "failed" at the very end because efibootmgr could not set up the new installation in EFI (it appears that only macOS is able to set boot partitions, which is something I'll need to figure out and work around...)

But, I can confirm that I was able to boot up into elementary using rEFInd and am now setting up a user account. Thanks so much for the help!

[vjr]

@itaiferber so you have elementary OS installed and working on your mac now??? that's good to hear!

i missed the step about switching to the right git branch so edited that comment and also made a mention to not run the installer from the terminal but to run it by clicking the icon in the applications menu which causes a logout and launch of the installer - which perhaps also uses the right permissions which may or may not fix the efibootmgr failure - although i have not been able to verify this myself.

i'll continue to look into the failure i am seeing with the default "erase and install" flow (some error about not being able to create LVM partition/volume) maybe its some similar fix to the custom installation flow.

[itaiferber]

@vjr

so you have elementary OS installed and working on your mac now??? that's good to hear!

Yes! There's still a good amount of hardware support I need to figure out, but it is up and running. Thanks again 😄

which perhaps also uses the right permissions which may or may not fix the efibootmgr failure - although i have not been able to verify this myself.

Ah, should've been clearer about this — this isn't an elementary/installer failure. I haven't found efibootmgr to be able to write to this machine's NVRAM from any live USB or installation; the only tool I've gotten to work is macOS's own built-in bless tool. I think it's just missing hardware/firmware support, understandably.

i'll continue to look into the failure i am seeing with the default "erase and install" flow (some error about not being able to create LVM partition/volume) maybe its some similar fix to the custom installation flow.

For what it's worth, before managing the custom install, but with your branches, I did initially hit "Erase and Install" (just to see if it would fail in the usual way) and the installation did appear to actually begin. I didn't actually let it go through because I wanted to test the partitioning scheme, so I'm not sure whether it would have failed somewhere along the way, but at least I didn't immediately hit "Could not Install"...

[vjr]

I've now filed PR pop-os/distinst#278 to go along with the installer PR #621 if anyone wants to try them out and comment?

[dinered]

I've now filed PR pop-os/distinst#278 to go along with the installer PR #621 if anyone wants to try them out and comment?

Hello, @vjr !
I have Macbook and same problem.
Trying this #620 (comment)
but can't find fix-sector-size ...
test@MacBookPro0934d76e:~/distinst$ git checkout fix-sector-size error: pathspec 'fix-sector-size' did not match any file(s) known to git
I am not familiar with git at all, so could you be so kind and tell me what I am doing wrong?