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my mid 2012 macbook pro with intel icore7 is in need of some attention. it's been running slugish for a while now.. I cleaned the hd as much as I could but since the os is not longer getting supported I though I should better get linux on the thing (still love it and it's a good machine)

I'm looking to install a new OS (ubuntu or xubuntu, haven't decided yet) but I'm running into an issue:

  1. no matter what I do I don't seem to be able to load startup manager using option/alt with the hope to get a live linux usb to load instead of macOS:
  • I've tried the nvram and SMC reset, (with the corresponding key combos), but assuming that reset something.. nothing seems to work.
  • as far as I can tell my keys work
  • I connected a generic usb keyboard but the pressing the alt key right after bootup yield no startup manager
  • somehow safemode does appear to work (pressing shit)
  • tried both alt/option keys (right and left)
  • tried holding alt pressed right after I press the power button and tried pressing fast on the key after pressing power.
  • tried only pressing and holding and pressing fastly only after hearing the startup chime
  • no matter what I do.. the computer simply starts into normal login screen.
  1. thought of reinstalling the os (currently on Catalina), thinking that might get the macbook to eventually, show the startup manager again.. but the problem I'm facing now is that the recovery partition somehow is not under /dev/disk0, but somehow there's something called recovery under /dev/disk1 (not sure how that got on there, it was a while when the disk went kaput and I had to reinstall) enter image description here

any options on how to either get the startup manager to start over with ubuntu or reinstall the partition to reinstall macOS to fix whatever the reason alt won't load (clearly I want to part ways with macOS since the last os is not longer getting supported)

a note, not sure if relevante. I checked my partions with first aid and all is good.

Thank you.

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  • The Recovery partition is in the right place [test it, Cmd/R at the chimes]… it's the Apple_KernelCoreDump that's the weird bit. that's a developer crash-dump storage space, not expected on a regular consumer OS. The list tells me your USB is not recognised at all. See if it mounts if you boot through to the regular macOS. If it does, check what format it is. [The failure of either shift or opt to call pre-boot options is worrying though.]
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 17:49
  • I've tried the recovery partion key combo before posting this: cmd + r will simply do nothing (holding, tapping... ), it simply goes in normal login page. I was reading on link below and it says that if that happens, something is wrong with my recovery partition... it also says that it should be in /dev/disk0 macworld.com/article/672001/…
    – Francisco Cortes
    Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 23:43
  • Recovery is on disk0, but it doesn't show to diskutil; only the 'wrapper' APFS partition can be seen. You can see it correctly in the synthesized disk, inside the APFS partition. Try the last remaining boot tests, Cmd/S, Cmd/T, Cmd/D & see if any of them do anything at all. It feels like your keyboard is just not communicating with the Mac before boot is underway - I presume it's working fine after that. Maybe try an external wired keyboard… just in case.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Oct 17, 2023 at 17:12

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