I know the 2015.06 ISO is still in pre-release, and I’m not actually going to do an install until the actual release (which I’m hoping is soon, but no rush, really), but I’ve been trying to find out information on how to go about doing this for a while now. I’ve checked with the Arch wiki, but obviously not all the information there is applicable, and I’m hoping to get some more Netrunner/Manjaro-specific information for doing this.
My intention is to dual-boot OS X and Netrunner, mostly because of stability reasons, and on the off-chance I need OS X for something. rEFInd will be installed, and the 128 GB SSD will be partitioned to provide OS X with (30 GB - 128 MB) (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Option_1:_EFI) of space.
So my questions are:
Will Calamares (whatever version is on the final disc) properly detect and handle a rEFInd-based setup?
Will Calamares handle a rEFInd-based setup automatically?
If not, will there be some option to do handle the rEFInd-based setup?
If Calamares doesn’t do rEFInd-based setups, will there be a CLI installer that can?
While I will attempt to provide the 128 MB space between the OS X partition and the Netrunner partition, if I can’t, will the Netrunner live disc have tools (whether graphically or via a CLI) to repartition if necessary?
Will I need to further manually partition the larger partition into root and swap partitions, or will the installer automatically do so?
I apologise for the question spam, some of which might possibly be elementary, but I’d like to clear anything I’m not sure about before installing so I don’t run around panicking when anything unexpected happens. Thanks for any help.
Calamares should be able to handle your rEFInd-based setup.
Rightr now there is not any plans to include the Manjaro CLI Installer on the ISO, however you can always install it yourself into the live environment and use it.
besides the manual partitioning optin inside Calamares, the qt based partitionmanager is also included on the live image.
If an aur package is required for your network card under Manjaro / Arch then the same would be true of the rolling edition of Netrunner.
Calamares can currently install GRUB2 or systemd-boot. You also have the option of not installing a bootloader (when doing manual partitioning), and setting up boot yourself.
Calamares has no rEFInd specific code. I don’t know what happens when you install GRUB2 on an EFI system partition that already has rEFInd, and I don’t know if rEFInd on Mac behaves differently from rEFInd on generic x86 hardware. Your setup is very specific, and interesting, and it might make sense to support it, but we need someone like you to test things (while being ready to handle potential breakage) and report back.
I’m the Calamares maintainer, and I’d love to see Calamares working well on a Mac with rEFInd, but I don’t own a Mac so I cannot do much on my own. Is rEFInd required to boot on a Mac? GRUB2 and systemd-boot (gummiboot) appear to be more common on generic x86 hardware so that’s what I aimed to support first.
I cannot speak for other installers, but the whole idea behind Calamares is having a configurable installer, which can be extended through Python modules. I suspect it shouldn’t be too hard to add specific support for installing rEFInd (or any other bootloader for that matter), assuming one has the willpower, the time and the hardware to test it on.
I’m assuming the 128MB space thing is a Mac-specific quirk. The automated partitioning actions in Calamares do not add empty space. The Netrunner ISO does have partitioning tools, and Calamares itself has a manual partitioning interface that allows you to leave empty space if you need to.
It really depends on the setup you’re aiming for. When doing a clean autopartitioning (erasing the whole disk), Calamares creates a swap partition. Otherwise, when autoresizing or replacing an existing Linux OS in-place, Calamares attempts to reuse existing swap partitions, if any, but does not create its own swap partition in order to avoid hitting the 4 primary partitions limit on MS-DOS (MBR) disklabels. Generally, in that case, if your existing OS had a Linux swap partition, your new OS will use the same one. Either way, if you are in doubt, the manual partitioning interface will allow you to configure your swap space any way you like.
As AJSlye mentioned, Netrunner inherits that from Manjaro. I suspect you’ll need the package from AUR, but if you feel like it you can test this pre-release ISO and report back, so that other Mac users know what to expect.
No need to apologize for your questions, we’re happy to help.
Sorry to bump this thread now, but where should I install the bootloader? Should I install it into the root partition, because I don’t want to override my rEFInd installation in the ESP?