Triple Boot macOS Sierra / Windows 10 Enterprise / Kali Linux

Question

I'm running into a problem trying to get a Triple Boot working on a MacBook Pro (256GB SSD) for macOS Sierra, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Kali Linux.

It all started today when I went to size down my Windows 10 partition and put a small Kali partition on, it installed GRUB without my asking it to, and when I rebooted, no Windows (now no OSX after I put reFind on there). Originally I just had Sierra and Win 10 on the drive via Bootcamp and everything worked fine.

Here's my current partition listing:

Disk /dev/sda: 233.8 GiB, 251000193024 bytes, 490234752 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: FDDCE2D9-5AF5-40B4-98F1-F8C077FE04D5

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1         40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sda2     409640  67540895  67131256    32G Apple Core storage
/dev/sda5   67540992 452859903 385318912 183.8G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda6  452859904 488310783  35450880  16.9G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda7  488310784 490233855   1923072   939M Linux swap

I can mount the ntfs drive from Kali right now thankfully and get any files I need off of there.

/dev/sda2 is OSX, /dev/sda5 is Windows 10 (why is it not coming up as sda3?), and sda6/7 are Kali.

I put reFind on the drive from Kali in an attempt to fix the issue, but actually it created more problems now I can't get into OSX at all.

Booting to Windows gives me the 0xc00000e boot error. I tried all suggestions on the net I could find, booting from install disc, recovery disc, on both diskpart does not list the WIndows drive and bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, bootrec /scanos, bootrec /RebuildBcd did not fix the issue, the latter two report 0 installations and only /sda1 & /sda2 are listed in diskpart.

Tried csrutil disable from Mac recovery, didn't do anything towards solving the problem. Tried testdisk from Kali it says it can't recover any partitions.

I also tried downloading the Ubuntu Repair Disc ISO to a USB it won't boot on this machine but other USB bootups will (I wrote it from Win32DiskImager on my desktop).

Is there a way to rebuild the partition table based on the file types that are there?

Looks like the data on the partitions is all intact, it's just having trouble booting into them. I can rebuild from scratch if I need, but I'm more curious in if tools exist that can alleviate crossing the gap between hfs, ntfs, and ext4.

Answer 1

It appears that Kali Linux grub boot loader took control of MacBook Pro boot system. Since this is on a MacBook Pro laptop, the easier way out of this quagmire is to restore your Sierra first. I hope you back up your Mac through Time machine before you experimenting on Kali Linux. If you can restore Mac, Windows should work too because you installed Windows through BootCamp.

Are you able to boot your Linux? If yes, get into boot selection and see whether it let you select Sierra, Windows 10 or Linux boot. Try to boot Mac & Windows from there. If that works, I am right track in my assumption. You need an expert to help you out longer term solution. Sierra shuts down any app not signed which is part of security improvement in Mac. I think grub boot loader is consider unsigned app and Sierra locks down the system. If I am right on this, you probably are not able to boot into any OS.