Linux Installation Failure

I have a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I created a bootcamp partition and then attempted to install ArchLinux on it. The installation seemed to go quite smoothly, but when I tried to boot all that was there was the blinking white line in the upper left hand corner. I then tried installing Linux Mint and Ubuntu, all with the same results. I also tried deleting the partitions entirely and reformatting using the linux installer, but to no avail. In an attempt to at least recover the hard drive space I booted into the recovery drive and deleted the partitions, but once the partitions were gone, Disk Utility wouldn't even recognize the free space exists. I am still able to partition and format that space using linux installation media. Does anyone know what the problem is and if I can (preferably) get linux installed or at least recover the hard drive space and restore it with my Mac partition?

Thanks in advance!

Let's resolve the unrecovered space first. You should be able to boot to the recovery partition and by using Disk Utility and the partition tab, drag the partition line to encompass the entire drive. Click "apply". That will (should) recover the missing space on the drive. Of course if the Linux partition is still showing up, highlight it and then press the minus button at the bottom and click apply. Then do the procedure above.

Now, about installing Linux. My advice and recommendation is not to use Boot Camp but to do it with virtual software. Much easier and no danger of messing up your hard drive or OS X. VirtualBox from Oracle is free but there is also Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Additionally, by using virtual software, you can switch to Linux without rebooting.

chscag said:

Now, about installing Linux. My advice and recommendation is not to use Boot Camp but to do it with virtual software. Much easier and no danger of messing up your hard drive or OS X. VirtualBox from Oracle is free but there is also Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Additionally, by using virtual software, you can switch to Linux without rebooting.

Click to expand...

I second that recommendation. I used VirtualBox with Linux for long time and only recently switched to VMWare Fusion (through a bundle) since it has better USB support. On my iMac I give my Linux VM 2 CPUs, 4GB of memory and 100GB of HD space it works great..

chscag said:

Let's resolve the unrecovered space first. You should be able to boot to the recovery partition and by using Disk Utility and the partition tab, drag the partition line to encompass the entire drive. Click "apply". That will (should) recover the missing space on the drive. Of course if the Linux partition is still showing up, highlight it and then press the minus button at the bottom and click apply. Then do the procedure above

Click to expand...

First off, thanks for the replies!

After hitting the minus sign on the linux partition, the space simply disappears and I can't drag the size of the Mac partition. It also won't let me type in a larger size. It seems that after deleting the partition, Disk Utility decides that space does not exist.

As to Virtual Box, that's probably a better idea so I don't have to go through this again. I'll switch to that if I ever manage to get my hard drive fixed.

Try resetting the PRAM on your MBP and then try again to consolidate the partition with the missing space. If it still won't work, you've no other choice but to backup your data, erase the disk, create one partition, re-format and reinstall. You can do all of that from the recovery partition.

The PRAM reset had no effect. I did notice when I rebooted that rEFIt still has linux listed as a boot option, which is odd considering the partition no longer exists. Could that be indicative of what would be causing disk utility to not use the free space?

No, the problem there is that rEFIt is still "blessing" the disk. You need to disable rEFIt before going on to recovery. Do this:

Open Finder and navigate to:

MacIntosh HD/Efi

Rename the Efi folder to something like "Efi_save" and then reboot. That will disable rEFIt and the blessing but will leave rEFIt intact in case you need to use it again sometime in the future.

That did disable rEFIt. I still can't resize the disk. I'm assuming that means the only option left is to reinstall?

If that is the case, do you know if a time-machine restoration will restore things like framework files?