Can't Partition Internal SSD

[brinary001]

It's first worth noting that I'm running the High Sierra public beta, but I think this is user error. I recently partitioned my internal drive for use with Kali Linux. Everything worked fine until one day last week I went to power my Mac on and it couldn't boot into anything. I had to run Recovery and install MacOS again (this all happened before I installed the High Sierra beta fyi).

Now that I'm somewhat back up and running, I want to configure a partition for Kali Linux again but this is what I see when I go into Disk Utility to start the process:

Is there something I'm overlooking? What is the dumb user error I made that I just can't see?

EDIT: The problem is that the '+' button is grayed out and won't let me add a partition.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP asks:
"What is the dumb user error I made that I just can't see?"

Well, for starters...
"I recently partitioned my internal drive for use with Kali Linux."
I'd bet that's got something to do with it!

 

[benthewraith]

It's first worth noting that I'm running the High Sierra public beta, but I think this is user error. I recently partitioned my internal drive for use with Kali Linux. Everything worked fine until one day last week I went to power my Mac on and it couldn't boot into anything. I had to run Recovery and install MacOS again (this all happened before I installed the High Sierra beta fyi).

Now that I'm somewhat back up and running, I want to configure a partition for Kali Linux again but this is what I see when I go into Disk Utility to start the process:
View attachment 707933

Is there something I'm overlooking? What is the dumb user error I made that I just can't see?

EDIT: The problem is that the '+' button is grayed out and won't let me add a partition.

It says it there in your picture, the volume cannot be resized.

 

[matram]

To create a new partition you must first shrink the current one to create free space.

You cannot skrink the primary partition with OSX running. Have you tried to do this in recovery mode?

 

[greg624]

Doesn't work in recovery mode either. High Sierra doesn't allow for partitioning yet unfortunately. Even on Beta 3. I can't even figure out a way to downgrade back to Sierra right now.

 

[benthewraith]

Doesn't work in recovery mode either. High Sierra doesn't allow for partitioning yet unfortunately. Even on Beta 3. I can't even figure out a way to downgrade back to Sierra right now.

You could use Internet Recovery to wipe the partition and then reinstall OSX. You might have to upgrade back to Sierra if you fall back to an earlier OS.

 

[brinary001]

Doesn't work in recovery mode either. High Sierra doesn't allow for partitioning yet unfortunately. Even on Beta 3. I can't even figure out a way to downgrade back to Sierra right now.

I can attest to not being able to do it in Recovery Mode like @matram suggested

I think it is something goofy with High Sierra, especially the new APFS system (I'm assuming anyway). I don't know what else it could be since it worked fine just last week. But when I tried to install the High Sierra beta, my whole system crashed and I was forced to restore to factory settings, so the beta being the source of all this headache isn't difficult to believe in the slightest.

Looks like I might just have to boot Kali off some form of external media, at least for the time being, while Apple--hopefully--fixes the partitioning problem in High Sierra. This isn't a super huge deal since the Broadcom wireless chips inside Macs don't really play nicely with Kali's wifi drivers, so I was already having to use a USB adapter to override this problem.

 

[greg624]

I can attest to not being able to do it in Recovery Mode like @matram suggested

I think it is something goofy with High Sierra, especially the new APFS system (I'm assuming anyway). I don't know what else it could be since it worked fine just last week. But when I tried to install the High Sierra beta, my whole system crashed and I was forced to restore to factory settings, so the beta being the source of all this headache isn't difficult to believe in the slightest.

Looks like I might just have to boot Kali off some form of external media, at least for the time being, while Apple--hopefully--fixes the partitioning problem in High Sierra. This isn't a super huge deal since the Broadcom wireless chips inside Macs don't really play nicely with Kali's wifi drivers, so I was already having to use a USB adapter to override this problem.

You could use a flash drive or something to put your important files on then use internet recovery to go back to Sierra.

 

[DarthBradicus]

Don’t know if you knew this already, but the way you add partitions in an APFS container is different than adding an HFS+ partition (which you can’t do on an internal APFS drive because the APFS container can’t be resized).

Instead of using the Partition tab, you can add an APFS volume to can existing APFS container by selecting the container in the sidebar and clicking the + button in the toolbar.

 

[brinary001]

Don’t know if you knew this already, but the way you add partitions in an APFS container is different than adding an HFS+ partition (which you can’t do on an internal APFS drive because the APFS container can’t be resized).

Instead of using the Partition tab, you can add an APFS volume to can existing APFS container by selecting the container in the sidebar and clicking the + button in the toolbar.

I see what you're talking about, but when I go to add a new volume I can only do it as APFS. The partition would have to be FAT32 to run Linux and that's not even an option anymore in Disk Utility on High Sierra...

 

[Taz Mangus]

I see what you're talking about, but when I go to add a new volume I can only do it as APFS. The partition would have to be FAT32 to run Linux and that's not even an option anymore in Disk Utility on High Sierra...

Did the FAT32 partition option get removed from both the command line and the GUI?

 

[Nermal]

I'm not running 10.13 and am too lazy to check the release notes to see whether this works yet... but can you use Boot Camp Assistant to create the partition instead?

 

[greg624]

I'm not running 10.13 and am too lazy to check the release notes to see whether this works yet... but can you use Boot Camp Assistant to create the partition instead?

Boot Camp does not work in High Sierra at the moment. One of the reasons I downgraded back to Sierra.

 

[cormo`]

The boot camp assistant has the same problem with creating a partition as the disk utility, the reason is the kernel dump partition.

I installed win 10 on an external ssd usb drive and only downloaded the boot camp tools from the assistant, that works like a charm. Probably there is also an option to run your linux from an external drive.

 

[brinary001]

Yeah this is most definitely something with High Sierra and the new Apple File System. Hopefully Apple or at least a third-party developer will come up with a work around for those of us wanting to partition internal APFS drives in a non-APFS format. That sounds like an engineering nightmare, and I’m sure whatever MacOS team at Apple who got assigned that are thrilled haha.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep running the HS beta because I’ve had very few problems with it (other than the partitioning thing obviously) and just create a persistent boot loader for Kali on a memory card.

 

[Fimeg]

Yeah this is most definitely something with High Sierra and the new Apple File System. Hopefully Apple or at least a third-party developer will come up with a work around for those of us wanting to partition internal APFS drives in a non-APFS format. That sounds like an engineering nightmare, and I’m sure whatever MacOS team at Apple who got assigned that are thrilled haha.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep running the HS beta because I’ve had very few problems with it (other than the partitioning thing obviously) and just create a persistent boot loader for Kali on a memory card.

I'd be willing to bet that your EFI partition isn't at least 200MB and the first partition on the drive..... or is it? I had the exact same problem because Journalling wasn't enabled, and my EFI partition was only 100MB as I originally specified it to be for Windows. Give it a shot!