Attempt to fix macOS startup volume after dual-boot Linux partition removal

Question

I have attempted to install Linux on my MacBook Pro 15" alongside macOS (Catalina) for a team project.

Since I needed the space reserved for the Linux partition back, I have decided to remove it through the standard disk utility.App procedure.

As you can see from the sidebar view, the two partitions reserved for Linux were respectively:

disk0s3: for swap memory (16 GB), formatted as MS-DOS FAT
disk0s4: (350 GB) Volume for the OS

There's also an SD card, but it is used as an external support

Firstly, I foolishly removed (with -) the SWAP partition (disk0s3 volume); Then I noticed that disk0s4 was not a Container disk1 "child" anymore.

To better understand what was going on, I ran diskutil list, whose output was

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical)
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:  GUID_partition_scheme                   +1 TB           disk0
    1:      EFI EFI                             209.7 MB        disk0s1
    2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF     635.5 GB        disk0s2
    3:  Microsoft Basic Data Untitled           350.4 GB        disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (synthesized)
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:  APFS Container Scheme -                 +633.5 GB       disk1
                              Physical Store disk   disk0s2
    1:      APFS Volume macOS - Dati            380.9 GB        disk1s1
    2:      APFS Volume Preboot                 81.4  MB        disk1s2
    3:      APFS Volume Recovery                530.0 MB        disk1s3
    4:      APFS Volume macOS                   11.3  GB        disk1s4
    5:      APFS Volume VM                      1.1   GB        disk1s5
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical)
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:  FDisk_partition_scheme                  +256.1 GB       disk2
    0:          Windows_NFTS                    +256.1 GB       disk2s1

Then the laptop suddenly died (I guess the battery was low).

Currently, As I turn it on, it just displays the grub2 menu. Also, By restarting it and by keeping pressed Alt, I can only choose "EFI boot" and by pressing Enter, it returns to the initial stage (grub2 menu).

Therefore, I made the laptop go into recovery mode through Alt+Cmd+R.

At first, by simply running the terminal command diskutil list no volumes were listed under disk0, nor under disk1 (Differently from what happened in this case) as it seemed it did not recognise the SSD anymore (which, btw is a Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus, size 1 TB).

-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:  GUID_partition_scheme                   +1 TB           disk0
    1:      Apple_HFS OS X Base System          2.0 GB          disk0s1
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +5.2 MB         disk1
/dev/disk2 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk2
/dev/disk3 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk3
/dev/disk4 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk4
/dev/disk5 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk5
/dev/disk6 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk6
/dev/disk7 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk7
/dev/disk8 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk8
/dev/disk9 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk9
/dev/disk10 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk10
/dev/disk11 (disk image):
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk11
/dev/disk12 (disk image):
#:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk12
/dev/disk13 (disk image):
#:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
0:          Untitled                        +524.3 KB       disk13
/dev/disk14 (internal, physical)
    #:      TYPE NAME                           SIZE            IDENTIFIER
    0:  FDisk_partition_scheme                  +256.1 GB       disk14
    0:          Windows_NFTS Pippo              +256.1 GB       disk14s1

also, by running gpt -r show disk0 the output was

-bash-3.2# gpt -r show disk0
    start       size        index       contents
        0           1                   PMBR
        1           1                   Pri GPT header
        2          32                   Pri GPT table
        34          6                   
        40    3927784           1       GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   4189935         32                   Sec GPT table
   4189967          1                   Sec GPT header

At a later time, after restarting the computer, entering recovery mode, I noticed a change in the interface, almost as if it had been updated. In fact, running the same commands, I got respectively

-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF ⁨⁩              633.5 GB   disk0s2
                    (free space)                         16.1 GB    -
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data ⁨UNTITLED⁩                350.4 GB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +3.2 GB     disk1
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS ⁨macOS Base System⁩       2.9 GB     disk1s2
/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +10.5 MB    disk2
/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +10.5 MB    disk3
/dev/disk4 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk4
/dev/disk5 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk5
/dev/disk6 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk6
/dev/disk7 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk7
/dev/disk8 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +10.5 MB    disk8
/dev/disk9 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +2.1 MB     disk9
/dev/disk10 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +4.2 MB     disk10
/dev/disk11 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +1.0 MB     disk11
/dev/disk12 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk12
   1:               Windows_NTFS ⁨Pippo                  256.1 GB   disk12s1
/dev/disk13 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +2.1 MB     disk13
/dev/disk14 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk14
/dev/disk15 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +2.1 MB     disk15
/dev/disk16 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk16
/dev/disk17 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +1.0 MB     disk17
/dev/disk18 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk18
/dev/disk19 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +524.3 KB   disk19
/dev/disk20 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +2.1 MB     disk20
/dev/disk21 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               +2.1 MB     disk21

whereas, by running again gpt -r show disk0

-bash-3.2# gpt -r show 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  1237327656      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
  1237737296    31357104         
  1269094400   684429312      3  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  1953523712        1423         
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

Lastly, in the start screen, 'Install an OS' no longer appears, but rather 'Install Monterey'.

Is there any way to solve this trouble and start back macOS?

This is a nicely presented question. However, it is better to text the text output of a command line console, rather than a screenshot. This is because an image is not text searchable. Paste the command output and block code format the text using (\```... [code] ... \```). — Greenonline, Dec 20 '23 at 14:53
You posted an image of the output from diskutil list while booted to Recovery. I think the image does not show the entire output. Could you post the output from diskutil list internal while booted to Recovery? While text is better than an image as suggested by @Greenonline, most users do not know how to do this from Recovery. So, in this case, posting an image would be sufficient. — David Anderson, Dec 20 '23 at 16:09
Wipe the laptop, reinstall macOS, restore your backup. That would seem to be the easiest. — Marc Wilson, Dec 20 '23 at 16:12
I disagree. Marc's solution seems like cumbersome way to correct the value of a 16 byte integer. — David Anderson, Dec 20 '23 at 16:21
@DavidAnderson I have posted the output you asked for, and adapted the photo’s content — TylerDurden, Dec 21 '23 at 16:20

David Anderson · Accepted Answer · 2023-12-22T00:02:37.203

Note: This answer works with macOS. In other words, Sierra (macOS 10.12) through Sonoma (macOS 14).

Many of the past answers, posted here at Ask Different to this type of question, used the gpt command to fix the GUID Partition Table (GPT). However, since this is no longer possible with the newer releases of macOS, this answer will use the third party gdisk command instead. This command will be downloaded from the SourceForge project GPT fdisk and will be automatically removed when the Mac is restarted.

Boot to Recovery. Use the command below to confirm the (product) version of macOS is 10.12 or newer.
```
sw_vers
```
Get the gdisk command. Enter the commands given below. The first command downloads a script which be used to get gdisk. The second command executes this script. If you do not wish to trust this script, then you can substitute the commands given in the section below titled "Getting gdisk Without Using a Script".
```
curl -o /tmp/get-gdisk https://maclinks.publicvm.com/get-gdisk
bash /tmp/get-gdisk
```

Fix the GPT. Enter the command below to get the identifier for the drive with the GPT that needs repair.

diskutil list internal

Enter the command below. If your identifier is not disk0, then make the appropriate substitution.

/tmp/gdisk /dev/disk0

The gdisk command is interactive. The input can be taken from the first column of the table given below.

Entry	Type	Comment
`p`	command	Print the partition table
`s`	command	Sort partitions
`d`	command	Delete a partition
`3`	parameter	Partition number
`t`	command	Change a partition's type code
`2`	parameter	Partition number
`af0a`	parameter	Hex code for APFS type partitions
`p`	command	Print the partition table
`w`	command	Write table to disk and exit
`y`	parameter	Confirm to proceed

Restart the Mac to macOS.
Recover the free space. Enter the command below to get the identifier for the Apple_APFS container.
```
diskutil list internal
```
Enter the command below. If your identifier is not disk0s2, then make the appropriate substitution.
```
diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 0
```

You are finished.

Getting `gdisk` Without Using a Script

cd /tmp
rm -rf gdisk.files gdisk
mkdir gdisk.files
cd gdisk.files
curl -L -o gdisk.pkg https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/gptfdisk/1.0.9/gdisk-binaries/gdisk-1.0.9.pkg
pkgutil --expand gdisk.pkg gdisk
tar xvf gdisk/Payload ./usr/local/bin/gdisk
mv usr/local/bin/gdisk ..
cd ..
rm -r gdisk.files
cd ~

Thank you, it worked fine! Since I no longer need the EFI partition, I would also remove the grub loader at boot. Based on your answer in this post, do I need to mount disk0s1, move BOOT and Ubuntu dirs to the trash and unmount the EFI volume? — TylerDurden, Dec 23 '23 at 22:51
TylerDuren: Yes, provided the Linux was Ubuntu. Grub and other Linux boot files are usually stored in disk0s1. — David Anderson, Dec 24 '23 at 00:18

Attempt to fix macOS startup volume after dual-boot Linux partition removal

1 Answers1

Getting gdisk Without Using a Script

Getting `gdisk` Without Using a Script