Solved 2014 Macbook Air 13 unable to install LMDE6 - NVRAM locked

[MJSlater]

I consider myself a noob with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. This is my daughter's Macbook that she had thrown in the corner so I'm not too worried about turning it into a brick although I would love to have Linux work on it. And of course she's totally forgotten all the Apple passwords.

As background, I've installed LMDE6 with no problems on a 2007 Acer Aspire 5920 (32 bit) and a 2016 Asus F555L. I've also installed it on a refurbished 2021 Surface 3 but still working on getting the sound to work.

On the Macbook I replaced the original 128 GB SSD with 512 GB M.2 SSD that supports NVMe 1.3. The live installation works fine but when I run the install (several times already!) it won't boot from the SSD. The install shows the GRUB boot menu will be installed on /dev/nvme0n1.

I've tried putting the original Macbook SSD back in and trying to run "sudo nvram -c" in the Apple terminal to no avail. I've also tried the <OPTION><COMMAND><P><R> boot sequence to reset the NVRAM to no avail (making sure to allow it to cycle twice). I've also tried it with LMDE5 since I've read posts where people had success with the previous distro. Again no luck.

After running the install with no luck and going back to the USB running live, the partition information for "/dev/nvme0n1 (476.94 GiB) is:

Partition Name File System Size Used Unused Flags
unallocated unallocated 2.0 MiB --- ---
/dev/nvme0n1p1 primary fat32 286.00 MiB 6.41MiB 279.59 MiB boot, esp
unallocated unallocated 1.0 MiB --- ---
/dev/nvme0n1p2 primary linux-swap 3.91 GiB 0.00 B 3.91 GiB
/unallocated unallocated 1.0 MiB --- ---
dev/nvme0n1p3 primary ext4 472.75 GiB 9.66 GiB 463.08 GiB

I've done a lot of searches online but haven't found anything that worked. Apologies in advance for being so verbose, but I'm hoping someone can offer something else for me to consider trying.

 

[Brickwizard]

On the Macbook I replaced the original 128 GB SSD with 512 GB M.2 SSD that supports NVMe 1.3.

That looks like your problem, M2 key has 2 formats one is NVMe and the older ones are SSD only, My feelings are your machine is SSD only [check the handbook] or look on motherboard most will have a sticker or be printed SSD only.
If by chance it is NVMe compatible then check your new NVMe for a hidden partition at the beginning [it will usually be less than 15mb] and delete it

 

[Brickwizard]

Addendum there ia also compatibility issues

Note that certain SSD’s have compatibility issues with macOS – including the Samsung PM981 and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus (the original 970 EVO works fine, though). Some of the best NVMe SSD’s currently available,

 

[MJSlater]

Thank you for the information, much appreciated! Update so far:

Checked the motherboard and could find no indication re: SSD only. Reinstalled the original SSD and doing a system information check it does indicate SSD (not sure that means much though?).

Went down the rabbit hole of looking for hidden partitions on my replacement SSD but couldn't find anything. (Although that may be due to my inexperience.) Got a great education though!

EVO 970 (not PLUS) were hard to find online. Managed to find a used one on Ebay but delivery won't be until July 23 - Aug 5. I'll keep the forum posted but it's going to be a while. Thanks again.

 

[MJSlater]

I received my EVO 970 (not PLUS) but unfortunately it wouldn't install either. So I decided to reinstall the original Apple SSD and sure enough it installed LMDE6 no problem! I retried 3 other NVMe SSD's (including the 970 again) but with no luck. So it appears this Macbook Air requires SSD only as you have noted.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply to my enquiry. I'm attaching the system information in case it is of interest.

I don't know if this is considered "SOLVED" or not since I would have liked to have upgraded to a larger NVMe SSD.

 

[Brickwizard]

You can mark it as solved
I found this [using MB number] which makes it SATA SSD only
MacBook Air "Core i7" 2.0 13" (Mid-2012) Proprietary* (6 Gb/s)