Install Clover to Fat32 USB for MBR boot

[sebus]

Never had a problem with EFI Clover boot (from FAT EFI partition)

But needed a small USB stick to permanently boot MBR only machine (post install)

 

I used 16Gb Catalina installation stick that has Clover installed to MBR, that works fine.

 

But for my boot I wanted to use small 256Mb stick

 

No matter how many times I tried (running the Clover package, or doing it fully manually as per this) I could never boot this machine with stick being FAT32.

 

As soon as I reformatted stick to HFS+ & used Clover package, it booted perfectly fine.

 

So the question: is it possible to boot Clover MBR from Fat32 USB stick?

 

sebus

Edited July 27, 2020 by sebus

[ameris_cyning]

It is.

 

Download the latest Clover ISO from here https://github.com/CloverHackyColor/CloverBootloader/releases/download/5114/CloverISO-5114.tar.lzma

 

Open up your terminal and type the following

 

sudo dd if=~/Downloads/Clover-5114-X64.iso of=/dev/diskNUMBER bs=4M

 

Change diskNUMBER to the number of the disk. You can find this under Disk Utility menubar view-> show all devices | then right click on the USB stick

[sebus]

No idea how you arrived top this conclusion, but it makes no sense.

If that is done to an empty USB (cleaned, partitioned as GPT, formatted to FAT32 on Windows), the resulting disk is:

 

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *7.8 GB     disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Clover-5120-X64         9.6 MB     disk2s2

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by sebus

[Slice]

10 hours ago, sebus said:

No idea how you arrived top this conclusion, but it makes no sense.

If that is done to an empty USB (cleaned, partitioned as GPT, formatted to FAT32), the resulting disk is:

 

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *7.8 GB     disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Clover-5120-X64         9.6 MB     disk2s2

 

Not a good partitioning.

This is working solution

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk3
   1:                  Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System... 8.1 GB     disk3s1

Otherwise I used manufacture formatted USB stick as usual it is FAT32 and install Clover to it.

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *3.9 GB     disk3
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 USB DISK                3.9 GB     disk3s1

 

[sebus]

If you write Clover iso to USB with dd - that is the partitioning that does get auto-created (so not me!)

 

And the one you created, does it actually boot Mac OS?

Edited July 30, 2020 by sebus

[jpz4085]

Hi @sebus,

 

If you're still interested in creating a legacy BIOS/MBR bootable Clover USB stick try the procedure below after installing macOS:

1. Open Terminal and use "diskutil list" to identify the USB disk. (disk#)
2. Unmount the disk and use dd to erase the existing partition tables and boot sectors.
   1. diskutil unmountDisk disk#
   2. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdisk# bs=1m count=2
3. Partition and format the disk: (Enter after each line)
   1. sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk#s#
   2. Type 'y' to initialize the partition table.
   3. Type 'e 1' to create the first (and only) partition.
   4. Type 'c' for partition ID FAT32LBA (Windows).
   5. Type 'n' to not edit in CHS mode.
   6. Press Enter to accept the default partition offset.
   7. Press Enter to accept the default partition size (entire disk).
   8. Type 'f 1' to set the new partition active.
   9. Type 'q' to exit and save the partition information.
4. Click "Ignore" to the disk error message (not formatted yet).
5. Format the partition as FAT32 and mount the partition:
   1. Type "diskutil list" to identify the partition. (disk#s#)
   2. Type "sudo newfs_msdos -F 32 -u 63 -v CLOVER /dev/rdisk#s#"
   3. Type "diskutil mount disk#s#"
6. Install Clover in legacy mode:
   1. You may need to reboot with SIP disabled and make the system (root) drive R/W. (Clover USB install may fail with a write error otherwise.)
      1. Clover Options - System Parameters - System Integrity Protection [0x0077]
      2. sudo mount -uw /
   2. Run Clover package and click "Continue" twice.
   3. Click "Change Install Location..." then select the CLOVER disk and click "Customize".
   4. Select the following options: (all others are defaults)
      1. Boot Sectors: Install boot0af in MBR
      2. BIOS Drivers, 64 bit - Recommended drivers - uncheck XhciDxe (might interfere with native USB3.0 support)
      3. Uncheck UEFI drivers (if only Legacy BIOS system)
      4. Choose "Themes" or "Install Clover Preference Pane" as desired.
      5. d. Click "Install" enter password then click "Close" when finished.
7. Configure Clover installation with ACPI patches, required kexts and anything else you need.

Using this procedure I was able to create a bootable Clover USB that starts macOS in both UEFI and BIOS modes on my laptop. See if it works for you.

[sebus]

I will give it a go, just to test, thanks

 

sebus