Install Mojave WITHOUT Recovery Partition: about to throw in the towel

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Level 1

4 points

Install Mojave WITHOUT Recovery Partition: about to throw in the towel

Hey guys,

Need some help here. Going straight for the elephant in the room, you might be wondering why the heck do I want to install Mojave without a Recovery Partition in the first place. Well, the official reason is that I'm currently trying to triple-boot my MBP with Mojave, Windows 10 and Gentoo Linux and the less partitions I have in the mix the better! The whole thing is already tricky enough without having to deal with an extra (and in my use case pointless) Recovery Partition. The real reason though, is that I already had a time-tested algorithm to install macOS without a Recovery Partition that worked flawlessly until Sierra. Unfortunately, it stopped working with High Sierra and Mojave. The whole thing is kind of personal now and it's driving me nuts!

In a nutshell, as described here and here, the trick was to restore straight from the "BaseSystem.dmg" image, delete the "/System/Installation/Packages" alias and manually copy the "Packages" folder from the "InstallESD.dmg" image. As mentioned here, this workaround prevents the creation of any kind of Recovery Partition from the get-go. For my dismay, when I tried it with High Sierra and Mojave, the following error message always appeared:

"macOS could not be installed on your computer. The installer resources were not found. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again"

I know it's perfectly possible to triple-boot without having to delete the Recovery Partition but, like I said above, it became personal. That said, I'm about to throw in the towel on this one and bite the "createinstallmedia" bullet so, if someone out there knows how to crack this sucker, by all means don't hold back!

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Jun 1, 2019 1:30 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 1, 2019 10:26 PM in response to kha0s

macOS Mojave automatically converts the boot partition to APFS, even if the internal drive is an HDD or a Fusion Drive. This results in the following:

The boot partition becomes an APFS container with multiple volumes inside:
- Your startup volume
- A Preboot volume with the FileVault login OS and keys for all macOS volumes, probably along with other files
- A Recovery volume with the corresponding Recovery OS for each macOS volume
- A VM volume to store sleep images in
The Recovery partition is deleted. It becomes an APFS volume inside the container and therefore takes up no space outside the container.

If you still wish to install macOS Mojave and not have a Recovery volume, use the following steps:

Use createinstallmedia to create a bootable installer. Don't modify the installer in any way.
Boot from the installer and format your macOS partition as APFS. This will create an APFS container with one volume inside (your future startup volume).
Install macOS Mojave onto the APFS volume. The other three volumes will be created by the installer as deemed necessary.
When Setup Assistant appears, press Command-Q to shut down your Mac.
Start up again from the bootable installer. Go to the top menu bar (where the Apple logo resides) and click on Utilities.
From the drop-down menu, select Terminal.
Type the following command and hit Enter (Return): diskutil apfs list
Take note of the identifier above the Recovery volume and copy it.
Type the below command to delete the Recovery volume. Replace volumeID with the actual volume ID you copied:
1. diskutil apfs deleteVolume volumeID
2. For example: diskutil apfs deleteVolume 01A23B4C-567D-89E0-1234-F5G67HIJ8901
3. For example: diskutil apfs deleteVolume disk1s3
Run diskutil apfs list again and verify that the Recovery volume is gone.
Restart your Mac into Setup Assistant, or continue partitioning your Mac as desired.

EDIT: macOS High Sierra converts SSDs to APFS and the same results as described above occur. However, HDDs and Fusion Drives still use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). macOS Mojave converts the boot partition to APFS regardless of what it is.

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Answer 2

kha0s Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 1, 2019 11:10 PM in response to Encryptor5000

Yeah, I started using APFS with High Sierra and that's probably what broke the old "BasesSystem.dmg" method. Appreciate the watertight step-by-step tutorial on how to manually delete the "Recovery Partition" mate! Will keep trying to figure out how to prevent its creation from the get-go but, if I keep hitting a wall there, your tutorial will definitely do the trick. Thanks!

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Install Mojave WITHOUT Recovery Partition: about to throw in the towel

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