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Booting modern Intel Macs from Linux on a USB stick
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CharlesS
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Jun 28, 2021, 06:24 PM
 
Hey all: I'm wondering if any of you have experience booting recent Macs from non-Apple OSes. Asking because I ran the Ubuntu installer on a USB flash drive, and if I stick the resulting drive, I can boot my 2013 MBP from it, no problem; option key, choose the drive, it starts right up.

However, on my 2019 16" MBP, the same USB stick just results in the computer sitting at a black screen until I eventually force a shutdown.

Things I've tried already:

- Starting in Recovery Mode and turning off all the startup disk security options

- Starting in Recovery Mode and disabling SIP

- Installing rEFInd on the USB drive's EFI partition and using `sudo bless` on it

Nothing has made a difference so far—my 2013 still boots from it like it's no problem, but my 2019 just won't have it.

Is there anything I might have missed?

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
Thorzdad
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Jun 28, 2021, 07:10 PM
 
Could you be running afoul, somehow, of the T2 security chip?
     
CharlesS  (op)
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Jun 28, 2021, 07:34 PM
 
That is what I assumed; however, setting this to "No Security" and "Allow booting from external media" in the window shown here should disable that, shouldn't it?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
reader50
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Jun 28, 2021, 08:56 PM
 
I'm assuming you are using an Ubuntu copy released after your 2019 MBP.

Your USB stick format. Is it GUID partition / MS-DOS (FAT) as Ubuntu suggests?

Older Intel Macs will boot from Apple Partition Map, but I haven't checked if that's still true on later models.
     
CharlesS  (op)
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Jun 28, 2021, 09:23 PM
 
It was from the current release of Ubuntu. The stick started out as GUID / FAT, but I think the Ubuntu installer reformatted it to ext4.

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
   
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