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rEFInd was working fine. High Sierra was the only OS on my MBP 2015. Here's what happened:

  1. Booted into MacOS
  2. Used Disk Util (gui) to shrink the boot disk so that I could install Linux Mint 21 onto the new partition.
  3. Boot partition: APFS (case-sensitive). New partition: ExFAT
  4. Rebooted Mac --> rEFInd loads
  5. Select Linux Mint Live USB drive
  6. Launch Gparted
  7. Deleted the two new partitions MacOS created as part of the resize/create operation in #2 above. I think this is where things got messed up.
  8. I applied the changes.
  9. Reboot
  10. rEFInd loads up... but no longer sees the MacOS drive

Booting the mac while holding Option/Alt no longer shows the boot drive, it only prompts for network boot. Similarly booting with Command+R goes directly to Internet Recovery instead of the local hard drive recovery.

Disk /dev/sda: 233.76 GiB, 251000193024 bytes, 490234752 sectors
Disk model: APPLE SSD SM0256
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: FBA9330D-F22F-4FE3-BBCE-B6DC8BFE43C8

Device      Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1      40    409639    409600  200M EFI System
/dev/sda2  409640 102045279 101635640 48.5G unknown

Screenshot of Gparted (now) --> https://i.postimg.cc/hj3dv2DJ/Screenshot-from-2022-10-18-07-36-50.png

What can I do to get my Mac to boot normally? Either restore it to boot from my MacOS (and I'll start the dual-boot process over) or to boot from rEFInd in such a way it seems my MacOS again.

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  • "Deleted the two new partitions" -- EFI & ? There should be 3, but they're synthesized at boot, so it depends how far you got… Preboot, Recovery & VM. See if Internet Recovery can fix it. APFS in High Sierra was pretty half-baked, so I'm not quite sure what you broke. [BTW, don't use case-sensitive unless you really have to. It's only about 90% supported but no-one ever tells you that.] btw2, a 2015 can run any OS up to Monterey, so you picked about the worst one to stop at. Mojave was good & still allowed 32-bit. The Sierras were both pants. ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Oct 18, 2022 at 13:10
  • Thanks for the advice about HSierra @Tetsujin, I might look into upgrading to Monterey. The EFI and system partition are still available (see screenshot), so maybe the 3rd partition I removed was needed for booting? Either way, I'm not sure where to go from here, other than to start totally from scratch. Which I'd like to avoid if practical.
    – NotMyRealName
    Commented Oct 18, 2022 at 14:08
  • The EFI being exactly 200MB bothers me. I've 6 on different drives here, all are 209.7 MB idk what else to do other than see where Internet Recovery gets you.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Oct 18, 2022 at 15:34
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    @Tetsujin I think the 200MiB is normal because it's in mebibytes (1024-based units) rather than true megabytes (1000-based). Specifically, 409600 sectors * 512 bytes/sector = 209715200 bytes = 200 MiB = 209.7152 MB (and that matches the EFI partition on my Mac).
    – Gordon Davisson
    Commented Oct 19, 2022 at 9:46
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    @Tetsujin unfortunately the Internet Recovery didn't yield anything useful. In fact the Disk Utility, when launched from the Recovery, screen didn't display the boot disk at all. Which seemed odd. I decided to cut my losses and did a fresh install of High Sierra (and will probably upgrade to Monterey). Fortunately I backed up my data 2 days ago (non-Timemachine)... otherwise I'd continue trying to fix the boot problem. Time to do a dual boot from scratch.
    – NotMyRealName
    Commented Oct 20, 2022 at 0:01

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