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macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

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Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#61

Post by Chu4eeno »

himata4113 wrote: post #58
AKSF_Ackermann wrote: post #17

Apparently fixed already, or will be fixed soon. https://social.treehouse.systems/@chaos_princess/11672546441...

404

Works here, here's the text for anyone who can't access it:

> Turns out APFS has an undocumented "VolBootable" flag that we were never setting since, well, it is undocumented, and the boot picker never cared about it (it read it and printed it's state to system log, just did not take any action). Anyway, fix PR-ed to asahi-installer, old installs will have an installer option to set the flag. But still, probably hold off on installing macos betas :P.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#62

Post by fsflover »

happyopossum wrote: post #47
Teever wrote: post #6

I wish the EU would regulate this kind of stuff. A consumer shouldn't be restricted from installing their own OS on a device that they bought, be it a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or server. A company the size of Apple should also be required to release proper documentation that enables the porting of operating systems to these kinds of devices. The reverse engineering work that the Asahi team did is remarkab…

>I wish the EU would regulate this kind of stuff. Regulate what exactly? Bugs? That's what this was...

Hardware documentation.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#63

Post by rustcleaner »

duped wrote: post #26
Teever wrote: post #6

I wish the EU would regulate this kind of stuff. A consumer shouldn't be restricted from installing their own OS on a device that they bought, be it a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or server. A company the size of Apple should also be required to release proper documentation that enables the porting of operating systems to these kinds of devices. The reverse engineering work that the Asahi team did is remarkab…

I don't think it's unreasonable for a device manufacturer to tightly couple it to the software they design to run on it.

No Universal Machine, as a component or the whole product, which prevents owner modification through DMCA-styled digital locking mechanisms, must be allowed to be sold on the open market. Such contravenes the rights of ordinary citizens. It is disgusting to me that we have allowed this state of affairs through our collective and individual inaction. America's founding fathers (terrorists by today's definitions) tarred and feathered for much less!

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#64

Post by bigyabai »

nomel wrote: post #53
bigyabai wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS and Windows are both such a chore for development, though. WSL was the closest I got to an "it just works" dev environment, but it exposes just how bad native toolchains like Cygwin and git bash are. macOS is hardly any better, and once you manage to install all of the GNU utilities it just feels like a poorly-supported Linux distro. It's a bunch of wasted effort to imitate a fraction of Linux's power. So what…

> it just feels like a poorly-supported Linux distro. That's because it's Unix, not Linux.

macOS, as shipped, is only Unix-like. Even when configured to pass UNIX certification, it doesn't qualify without the temporary waivers:

  if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the UNIX® 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions with the strictatime option, format your APFS partitions case-sensitive (by default, APFS is case-insensitive, so you’ll need to reinstall), disable Spotlight, copy the binaries uucp, uuname, uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin, set the setuid bit on all of these binaries, add /usr/local/bin to your PATH before /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, enable the uucp service, and handle the mystery issues listed in the four Temporary Waivers. [1]
Maybe your installation of macOS is technically Unix, but mine sure as hell ain't. Desktop "Unix" in 2026 is little more than lipstick on a pig anyhow.

[1] https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certif...

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#66

Post by GeekyBear »

Rohansi wrote: post #50
GeekyBear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.

I don't know about Intel ME but AMD PSP is basically the equivalent of Apple's Secure Enclave, so there's that.

You should probably do do some reading on the subject to gain a bit more understanding:

> This puts [Apple Silicon Macs] somewhere between x86 PCs and a libre-first system like the Talos II in terms of freedom to replace firmware and boot components; while a number of blobs are required in order to boot the system, none of those have the ability to take over the OS or compromise it post-boot (unlike, say, Intel ME and AMD PSP on recent systems, or the DMA-capable chips on the LPC bus running opaque blobs that exist on even old ThinkPads).

https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/introduction/

The Secure Enclave is equivalent to a PC's TPM (a TPM is now required to run Windows) not any form of a management engine.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#67

Post by well_ackshually »

GeekyBear wrote: post #43
hollow-moe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M series macs are weird tho, yes the bootloader allows it but absolutely no documentation on the hardware, drivers etc. Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes, but for development purposes(and ye they could hide the feature behind apple account with paid dev license) or anti-anti-trust measures à-la Google with Firefox: in front of a jury of normal people they can simply sa…

> M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.

>More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over?

Considering they're pretty much fully undocumented (officially, that is) and could contain any number of IME equivalents since we know that they already have independent processors like the secure enclave running its own OS: yeah, probably more weird. Just because Asahi did not find one doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#69

Post by fg137 »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #4
grigio wrote: post #2

Sadly both main ARM platforms (Apple silicon and Qualcomm) are a mine field for Linux

Other than this situation, what other landmines are there? I have an M1 with Asahi Arch Linux that I've been using as my primary laptop for the last 8 months, its my favorite laptop by far out of the 5ish I have.

Only M1 and M2 (and Pro versions).

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#70

Post by duskwuff »

bigyabai wrote: post #64
nomel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it just feels like a poorly-supported Linux distro. That's because it's Unix, not Linux.

macOS, as shipped, is only Unix-like. Even when configured to pass UNIX certification, it doesn't qualify without the temporary waivers: if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the UNIX® 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions with the strictatime option, forma…

As an aside:

> ... copy the binaries uucp, uuname, uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin ...

This should be your hint that UNIX certification is more of a box-checking exercise than a real test of functionality. UUCP has been functionally obsolete since at least the mid-1990s; it's surprising that macOS even bothers shipping its binaries, and it's exceptionally silly that UNIX certification requires it to be present and installed in /usr/local.

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