Dual Boot - Live USB not reading Mac Partitions

[kwsherwood]

I'm attempting to install Mint 18 on a MacBook Pro.

I have the main drive partitioned, with 50GB reserved for Mint (Fat32)

reFind allows me to boot from the live USB. However, this Grub options that come up including running Mint in regular / recover mode and OEM install. If I execute mint, then try to chose the "Install Mint" option from with the mint GUI, I get an error.

"Installing Mint requires 10GB. This computer only has 4 GB."

So the mint installer on the USB is not allowing me to select the partition on the hard drive but is instead reading the space on this USB.

[kwsherwood]

Possible additional information of note:

Running GParted within live Mint shows space/partitions on the USB as
/dev/sda (3.13 GiB)

This initial "error" message came up which I "ignore" on GParted:

"Not all of the space available to /dev/sda appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 4121536 blocks) or continue with the current setting?"

I can't toggle to any other drives with Gparted. This makes me think the problem might have to do with the Mac partition formats?

[kwsherwood]

Next step in the process:

Successfully used live USB to install on external hard drive.
reFINd successfully give option to boot Mint 18 on this external drive.
However, cannot access main hard disk.

Any thoughts?

I'm 10 hours into this process!

[kukamuumuka]

What tell commands

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sudo parted -l

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inxi -po

[kwsherwood]

Code: Select all

mint@mint ~ $ sudo parted -l
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/sda appears to be used, you can
fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 27406272 blocks) or continue with
the current setting?    
Fix/Ignore? i                                                             
Error: Can't have overlapping partitions.
Ignore/Cancel? C                                                          
Model: Generic STORAGE DEVICE (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 15.9GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags: 

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-------------
mint@mint ~ $ inxi -po
Unmounted: ID-1: /dev/sda1 size: 1.90G
           label: Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64-bit uuid: 2017-11-24-13-25-42-00
           ID-2: /dev/sda2 size: 0.00G
           fs: FAT (12 bit) label: N/A uuid: C8A5-5244
mint@mint ~ $ 

[prestonR]

I'm attempting to install Mint 18 on a MacBook Pro

Which one? If it's a very recent one you need a kernel > 4.11or the internal drive won't be recognised, have a look at my comment here viewtopic.php?f=46&t=261825&hilit=macbook+pro