Mac cannot boot after manual partitioning, unless using ext4

[Chad A Davis]

I performed manual partitioning. In addition to a swap partition and the reiserfs partition, I left several megabytes free at the beginning of the disk for the GPT/bios_grub partition (the approach works fine for ext4 partitions). The installation proceeds without error. On reboot the Mac "Folder with question mark" icon is shown (meaning no bootable partitions found).

This is ubuntu-oneiric-desktop-amd64+mac from 2011-09-21.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: parted 2.3-6ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-11.18-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.284
Date: Thu Sep 22 19:57:24 2011
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta amd64+mac (20110921.2)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: parted
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Chad A Davis (chadadavis)]

And the output from 'sfdisk -d -uS' after the partitioning is attached. Is it correct that the reiserfs partition type should be 'ef' ?

[Chad A Davis (chadadavis)]

Also, when I do try to manually create the efi partition (in case it's not automatically created) I get:

  The efi file system creation in partition #3 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) failed.

In this case I tried to create an xfs filesystem, rather than a reiserfs, but the failure occurred while trying to create the efi partition. So, I believe that it belongs in this bug report.

I will attach these new logs as well.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[uMac (uvaio)]

Hi, do you think released fix may also help to this problem? https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/878003

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Chad, the EFI partition creation problem you had is part of bug 811485.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Although the exact symptoms are a bit different, I intend to fix this in the same way as bug 855871, and have posted a more detailed explanation there. Accordingly, I'll mark this as a duplicate.