Help! Trying to run Haiku off USB on Macbook Pro

Hello!

I’m interested in checking out Haiku! But I’m struggling getting a bootable USB working.

I have some experience making bootable USBs for linux. But can’t seem to get it working for Haiku.

Device: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
OS: OS X 10.11.6.
Using an 8GB USB drive.

Followed the instructions here: https://www.haiku-os.org/guides/installing/making_haiku_usb_stick

The final instruction I put in was: sudo dd if=~/Downloads/haiku-r1alpha4.1-anyboot/haiku-r1alpha4-anyboot.image of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
(the location and the disk# were correct.

It copies the image over, but when it’s done, I get the message: “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” When I boot up (holding alt/option) the USB doesn’t show up, just the HD shows up.

What am I doing wrong?

Macs don’t boot from BIOS but from UEFI and that is still a work in progress in Haiku: https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/jessicah/2016-12-15_uefi_progress_update/

I have had some success running Haiku from a HD partition on my 2010 iMac in the past. The trick is to use either the rEFIt or the rEFInd bootloaders. I used the latter. In true Linux fashion the documentation makes it sound far more complex than it really is. Just run the shell script and watch it install itself. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

It ran OK. No sound, no webcam IIRC, but I did have (wired) networking. The main problem was that the nearest available resolution got smeared over a different physical resolution, so everything that should be circular became a squat oval. That could have been fixed by now, I know there has been work done on the Intel Driver.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that I installed from CD-R, not from a USB stick.

I have tried creating a bootable Haiku USB (Both UEFI and legacy) with a MacBook Pro (Retina 13-inch Late 2012) on macOS. I burned the image with Apple Pi Baker and I got the USB to appear in the boot menu.

But if you boot Haiku from a MacBook Pro that has a USB3 Port, it will crash at the stage when it tries to find a bootable image. Related issue is #12895.

For now, you can boot the image under Virtualbox and try out Haiku from there. If you are after the bleeding edge releases, try some of the nightly images.

Thank you, both of you! Very informative

I ran Haiku off USB-3 on mid 2014 MBP (Retina, 16Gb, GT750M), the trick is to have the right type of USB stick. Out of 5 sticks on my desk, only 2 work. This is a Mac specific thing, since Linux has same issue.

Hardware wise, most of the system works quite well. No wireless (Linux has no Broadcom firmware either), but Thunderbolt ethernet works well (and unlike Windows 10, is actually hot pluggable). For Intel sound to work, I first need to boot OSX, then reboot to Haiku, and I get audio out via headphones. The rest of the system is usable.

I also boot Haiku from external USB harddisk.

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