MacOS – Wierd problem after doing a triple boot OS-X, UBUNTU 20.04, KALI-LINUX

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I've successfully did a triple boot on my Macbook-pro but somehow even after creating separate EFI partitions, all my grub files ended up in the first EFI partition. So I separated them manually.

Earlier to this process, my auto boot was into the Ubuntu boot screen where I was able to select Ubuntu or Kali. To access OS-X, I had to use option key. There I got 3 options and I was able to opt any. But after separating, and using option key, it also gives me 3 options, but I get some kind of error(excuse my limited knowledge).

The following are the pics for reference.
This is the OS-X boot page.

I could boot normally if I select "Macintosh HD" but I get this error when I choose any other "efi boot".

After a few seconds, I get this page, and then I can normally log-in to either OS.

My auto-boot remained the same, which is getting the above page.

This is my disk information. Disk0s1 is OS-X, Disk0s3 is Ubuntu, Disk0s6 is Kali.

$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         120.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                        EFI NO NAME                 400.6 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         65.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Linux Swap                         15.0 GB    disk0s5
   6:                        EFI NO NAME                 399.5 MB   disk0s6
   7:       Microsoft Basic Data                         50.0 GB    disk0s7

$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6         
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  234375000      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  234784640        128         
  234784768     782336      3  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  235567104  126953472      4  GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
  362520576   29296640      5  GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
  391817216     780288      6  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  392597504   97636352      7  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  490233856        863         
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

The following are the current partition contents.

$ sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1 
Volume EFI on /dev/disk0s1 mounted
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI
.       .Spotlight-V100 .fseventsd  EFI
..      .Trashes    BOOTLOG
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI/EFI 
.   ..  APPLE   BOOT
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI/EFI/APPLE 
.       ..      CACHES      EXTENSIONS  FIRMWARE
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI/EFI/APPLE/EXTENSIONS 
.       ..      Firmware.scap
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI/EFI/APPLE/FIRMWARE  
.       ..      MBP121.fd
$ ls -a /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT            
.       ..      BOOTX64.EFI


$ sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s3
Volume NO NAME on /dev/disk0s3 mounted
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME 
.           .Trashes        .fseventsd
..          .VolumeIcon.icns    EFI
.Spotlight-V100     ._.VolumeIcon.icns
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/EFI/
.   ..  BOOT    BOOTLOG Ubuntu
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/EFI/BOOT
.       ..      BOOTX64.EFI
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/EFI/Ubuntu 
.       BOOTX64.CSV grubx64.efi shimx64.efi
..      grub.cfg    mmx64.efi


$ sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s6
Volume NO NAME on /dev/disk0s6 mounted
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/   
.       .Spotlight-V100 .fseventsd
..      .Trashes    EFI
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/EFI                 
.   ..  kali
$ ls -a /Volumes/NO\ NAME/EFI/kali  
.       ..      grubx64.efi

Best Answer

This answer assumes the following:

You are using macOS High Sierra or newer.
The /etc/fstab file is setup up correctly for Ubuntu and Kali. More specifically, each /etc/fstab file has the correct entry for the filesystem stored in the EFI partition.
Grub is installed correctly for Ubuntu and Kali.

Below are steps that can be taken to improve your configuration.

Remove from the Mac Startup Manager the existing internal drive icon with the EFI Boot label shown below.

Use the macOS commands given below.
```
 sudo diskutil mount disk0s1
 rm /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
 diskutil unmount disk0s1
```

Give names and labels to the EFI partitions used by Ubuntu and Kali. Also, make Grub from the Kali installation appear in the Mac Startup Manager. Below are the macOS commands I would use.

 sudo diskutil mount disk0s3
 diskutil rename disk0s3 EFI2
 bless --folder /Volumes/EFI2/EFI/BOOT --label "Ubuntu"
 diskutil unmount disk0s3
 sudo diskutil mount disk0s6
 diskutil rename disk0s6 EFI3
 mkdir -p /Volumes/EFI3/EFI/BOOT
 cp /Volumes/EFI3/EFI/kali/grubx64.efi /Volumes/EFI3/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi
 bless --folder /Volumes/EFI3/EFI/BOOT --label "Kali"
 diskutil unmount disk0s6

Add a Kali linux icon to Mac Startup Manager.

Note: This step assumes you have completed the previous step.

Download the file mac-icns.dmg from this SourceForge website to your Downloads folder. Next, enter the following command to copy the Kali linux icon set (icns) file to your third EFI partition.
```
 hdiutil attach ~/Downloads/mac-icns.dmg
 sudo diskutil mount disk0s6
 cp /Volumes/mac-icns/OSX10.11.6/os_kali.icns /Volumes/EFI3/.VolumeIcon.icns
 diskutil unmount disk0s6
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/mac-icns
```
The next time you boot to the Mac Startup Manager, the following icon should appear.
Change the type of the partition containing Kali to the linux filesystem data type.

Boot to either Ubuntu or Kali linux. Open a window to enter commands. Enter the following command to edit the GUID Partition Table (GPT).
```
 sudo gdisk /dev/sda
```
Enter the following commands into gdisk.
```
 t
 7
 8300
 w
 y
```
Restart the Mac.
Configure Grub to be hidden and/or omit other operating systems.

Boot to either Ubuntu or Kali linux. Open a window to enter commands. Enter the following command to edit the grub file.
```
 sudo nano /etc/default/grub
```
To remove other operating systems from the Grub menu, add the line
```
 GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true
```
after the line given below.
```
 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
```
To skip the Grub menu, add the line
```
 GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
```
after the line given below.
```
 GRUB_DEFAULT=0
```
Exit the editor and enter the following command to update Grub.
```
 sudo update-grub
```

Booting Ubuntu from the Mac Startup Manager

Note: This section refers to the files stored in /dev/sda3.

When Ubuntu is selected from the Mac Startup Manager, the bootx64.efi (which is a copy of shimx64.efi) is booted before grubx64.efi is booted. This results in Ubuntu being automatically made the default operating system to boot.

Alternative to Booting Grub Using `bootx64.efi`

Note: This section refers to the files stored in /dev/sda6.

One of the above instructions is to copy the grubx64.efi file to the bootx64.efi file. If the grubx64.efi is changed during some future Kali update/upgrade, then this new file will not be copied to bootx64.efi. One way to avoid this problem would be to replace the bootx64.efi file with a rEFInd version. This new version would silently boot Grub from the grubx64.efi file. Below are the steps needed to make the change.

Boot to Kali linux.
Open a window to enter commands.
Enter the following commands to remove any previous versions of rEFInd that may have been downloaded.
```
cd ~/Downloads
rm -rf refind_*_amd64.deb refind
```
Use a web browser to download and save rEFInd to your Downloads folder from the following SourceForge website.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/

Enter the following command to install rEFInd.

cd ~/Downloads
dpkg-deb -xv refind_*_amd64.deb refind
sudo refind/usr/share/refind-*/refind-install --usedefault /dev/sda6
sudo umount -q /tmp/refind_install
rm -rf refind_*_amd64.deb refind
cd ~

Enter the following command to open refind.conf file in the gedit editor.
```
sudo nano /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/refind.conf 
```

Add the following lines to the end of the refind.conf file.

menuentry Kali {
    loader /EFI/kali/grubx64.efi
    icon /EFI/refind/icons/os_linux.png
    enabled
}
scanner manual
showtools 
timeout -1
screensaver -1

Exit nano and save the changes.

References

Separating EFI partitions of Ubuntu 20.04 and Mac OSX on Macbook Pro
Fully Move Grub to New Partition
Grub2/Setup
A gdisk Walkthrough
The rEFInd Boot Manager
The rEFInd Boot Manager: Installing rEFInd
refind-install
How to extract a .deb file without opening it on Debian or Ubuntu Linux
What is the difference between grubx64 and shimx64?
How To Add Apt Repository In Ubuntu

Related Solutions

I think I messed up the Fusion Drive on the 1TB iMac (with BootCamp)

Theoretically everything is fine with your Fusion Drive. Fusion Drives look like this. Disk0 is your SSD with 121 GB and disk1 is your HDD with ~1 TB (~1.121 TB summed up).

The larger parts of your SSD (disk0s2) and your HDD (disk1s2) are pooled to a CoreStorage LVG (Fusion Drive: disk3) with a size of 967.8 GB. The rest is reserved for EFIs, a Recovery HD (alltogether ~1.3 GB) and your old Windows partition - now probably free space (~152 GB).

The logical volume 'Macintosh HD' (967.8 GB) spans disk0s2 and disk1s2. This is the first 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1. The volume 'Macintosh HD' - it's the one visible on the desktop - should ideally also have about 967.8 GB. This is the second 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1.
In fact it has only 852.67 GB (see picture 3).

In the second picture the logical volume 'Macintosh HD' is the first listed in black, the volume 'Macintosh HD' is the second listed in black, the other two 'Macintosh HD's listed in grey are the parts of your SSD and HDD dedicated to the logical volume 'Macintosh HD'.

In my opinion something went wrong after deleting various partitions with the Bootcamp Assistant/Disk Utility or in Windows.

Preparation:

Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive)
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite).

Now you may either repair CoreStorage or rebuild your Fusion Drive:

'Repair CoreStorage' (not recommended):

First i would try to check the volume 'Macintosh HD' with Disk Utility. If the volume is corrupted consider a reinstall of Mac OS X.
If the volume is ok quit Disk Utility
Open Terminal and enter diskutil unmountDisk /dev/LVIdentifier and both diskutil unmountDisk /dev/DiskContainingApple_CoreStorageIdentifier
In your case: first diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3 then diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
remove the EFI NO NAME partition with gpt remove -i IndexNumberOfEFINoName DiskIdentifier:
gpt remove -i 4 disk1
Remount the CoreStorage disks and then the Logical Volume:
In your case: first diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1 and then diskutil mount /dev/disk3.

enter gpt -r -vvv show /dev/diskIdentfierOfApple_CoreStorage to get infos of your HDD CoreStorage disk.
In your case: gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
It should look like this:

-bash-3.2# gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512;         blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=409640, size=1671210848
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=1671620488, size=1269760
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167                               
     start          size  index contents                                        
         0             1        PMBR                                            
         1             1        Pri GPT header                                  
         2            32        Pri GPT table                                   
        34             6
        40        409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640    1671210848      2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1671620488       1269760      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1672890248     280634887
1953525135            32        Sec GPT table
1953525167             1        Sec GPT header

The free space on your HDD has 280634887 blocks. Please calculate the biggest block number dividable through 8. That's 280634880 blocks (á 512 bytes) which equals 143685058560 B or ~143.7 GB. Add the size of your HDD CoreStorage Physical Volume (852666400768 B) The result is 143685058560 B + 852666400768 B = 996351459328 B
Resize your HDD CoreStorage physical volume with diskutil cs resizeDisk HDDPVUUID newsize
In your case: diskutil cs resizeDisk 93892BE8-2B7F-4ABD-A4C3-984495DCD98D 996351459328b
Calculate the maximal size of your CoreStorage Logical Volume in diskutil cs list: (size disk0s2) + (size disk1s2) In your case that's 120988852224 B + 996351459328 B = 1117340311552 B. That should be the size of your refreshed Logical Volume Group.
Resize your Logical Volume with diskutil cs resizeVolume LVUUID LVGSize-128 MB In your case that's diskutil cs resizeVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0 1117212311552b. If you get an error (There is not enough free space...) choose a smaller size like 1117148311552b.
Quit Terminal and open Disk Utility.
Check your expanded CoreStorage Volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility, choose your CS volume as startup disk and restart your Mac

'Rebuild Fusion Drive' (recommended if you have a Time Machine backup)

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter:
diskutil cs list to get the CoreStorage listing.
Copy the Logical Volume UUID, it's the fifth listed.
Now delete the Logical Volume with diskutil cs deleteVolume LVUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs deleteVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0.
Copy the Logical Volume Group UUID, it's the first listed in the listing of diskutil cs list.
Then delete the Logical Volume Group with diskutil cs delete LVGUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs delete 1EFE58BC-3613-44C4-86EE-D816F3B66E3E
Enter exit and quit 'Terminal'
Open 'Disk Utility'. Enter 'Ignore' if you are asked to fix the drives.
Choose your SSD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~121 GB

Example:
Choose your HDD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~1 TB

Example:
Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal
Enter diskutil list

Example (your disk identifiers and sizes are different of course: Your volume SSD probably has the Identifier disk0s2 and the size 121 GB and your volume HDD probably has the Identifier disk1s2 and the size 1.0 TB):
Enter diskutil cs create "Name" IdentifierSSD IdentifierHDD
In your case probably diskutil cs create "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk1s2.

Copy the resulting LVGUUID

Example:
Enter diskutil cs CreateVolume LVGUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%.

Example:
Enter diskutil cs list
Check the size of your Logical Volume. It should have the size ~1.121 TB

Example:
Quit Terminal
Open 'Disk Utility' and check your newly created volume for errors
Quit 'Disk Utility'
Attach your external Time Machine backup drive or check this answer if you use NAS or another network share.
Open 'Restore from Time Machine Backup'
Choose the appropriate Time Machine backup and restore your system
Reboot to your restored system.
Unmount and detach your Time Machine backup drive
Open 'Terminal' and enter 'diskutil list'
Check if your 'Recovery HD' is listed.
If your 'Recovery HD' is missing, usually reinstalling your current system with the latest available system installer (e.g. 'Install OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)' if Mavericks is currently installed) will recreate it without loosing any data. AFAIK Recovery Partition Creator 3.8 will NOT create a Recovery HD on CoreStorage volumes.
After reinstalling the system with the latest available system installer open App Store and install the latest security fixes.

MacOS – Uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 on Yosemite

Note: El Capitan (OS X 10.11) prevents users from selecting rEFInd and common Linux distributions from the Startup Disk pane. The new preferred method is to install rEFInd into the an EFI partition. My answer, to an unrelated question, outlines this new preferred method to start the rEFInd Boot Manager and Linux operating systems. The answer, given below, applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10) and possibly earlier versions of OS X.

Personally, I installed rEFInd on my computer to its own partition. This prevents the problems you are encountering. Everything ./install.sh installed went to this partition. If I want to remove rEFInd, I can simply erase or remove the partition. Of course both are unnecessary, because I can turn rEFInd on and off at will. I just go to the Startup window in System Preferences select my boot partition. This computer has OS X, Windows, Fedora and rEFInd installed.

I also can select the boot partition under Windows by using BootCamp and by holding the Option key down at startup. The command diskutil list produces:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Marlin                  300.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Coelacanth              98.9 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Linux HFS+ ESP          209.7 MB   disk0s5
   6: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4               524.3 MB   disk0s6
   7:                  Linux LVM                         98.6 GB    disk0s7
   8:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  939.5 MB   disk0s8

Note, the rEFInd partition is ~ 1 GB in size. In fact, it can be as small as 100 MB. When I setup this computer, I used the Disk Utility application to create the rEFInd partition. If I would have used the gpt command, I could have created a smaller partition. Neither OS X, Windows, Fedora nor rEFInd use the EFI partition to boot the computer. In fact, there is nothing useful in the EFI partition.

Answer to your questions:

How do I uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 using OS X 10.10.3? Read the ./install.sh file and undo whatever it did. I should of had you run the commands bless --info and bless --info --getBoot. These would have told where the .efi file was stored. Note: Almost everyone installs rEFInd to the OS X boot partition.

How would I go and reinstall it using different options if I cannot remove it? The author of the software never said rEFInd could not be removed. I suggested you just install it again to its own partition. This might be a good place to mention the gpt command has to be run while either booted to an external recover partition or while booted to internet recovery.

Could I simply remove the EFI partition or would that corrupt my Mac? Do not remove the EFI partition! It is not used to boot OS X, but it is used by OS X for other things.