Hard Disk not recognised on 2018 Macbook Pro

[MarkG]

@Sebastian-Roth Here are some relevant screen grabs. At a guess, I’d say the dreaded T2 security chip might be the cause of the problem, it’s caused us no end of grief in other areas. (This is the fist Mac where I’ve had to user recovery mode to disable Secure Boot before I can boot from the USB stick, for example)

[Sebastian Roth]

@MarkG You might try booting some fairly recent Linux Live OS to see if the disk is recognized. Try Ubuntu for example.

[MarkG]

@Sebastian-Roth Hmmm. Good call. Ubuntu 18.10 won’t even boot let alone recognise a disk. I get the initial GRUB menu but then very little after that. Black screen now for ~ 5 minutes.

[MarkG]

@Sebastian-Roth I think this is the answer. No drivers for Apple’s nvme controller in the kernel yet

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1052373/install-ubuntu-bionic-18-04-on-macbook-pro-2018

[george1421]

@MarkG Is there a way to get the vendor ID and hardware ID of nvme controller? Under linux the command would be lspce -nn This would show the hardware name and ID numbers. In windows it would be under the device manager. Yes I know you have an Apple, but I don’t have experience with it. I do have access to the linux kernel code to confirm if the device is supported.

[MarkG]

@george1421 Thanks, but no chance. I don’t have a license to install Windows, Linux won’t boot, and MacOS system profiler no longer displays hardware IDs.

It’s really like Apple don’t want people to mess with their hardware

[Tom Elliott]

@MarkG Apple may not have a GUI interface to display the hardware IDs.

http://teczd.com/2015/09/23/osx-get-system-info-from-command-line/

In particular: SPNVMeDataType

[MarkG]

@Tom-Elliott That’s just command-line system_profiler, which is used by the GUI version and only gives me the exact same info I posted in the images earlier. No hardware IDs at all.

[george1421]

@MarkG Lets try this: Lets see if we can get what we need from linux even though it might not have a driver for it. If you are using the USB flash drive to boot this mac into FOG… Boot it up using the usb flash drive and pick option 6 (debug). This will drop you to a linux command prompt after a few enter key presses.

if you want to remote debug this computer so its easier to copy and paste or create screen images do this part, if not skip to the next part

1. At the FOS command prompt key in ip addr show record the IP address of eth0 (or eth1) depending on your configuration.
2. At the FOS command prompt set root’s password with passwd Give root an easy password like hello. It doesn’t matter because it will be reset the next time FOS boots.
3. From your desktop computer use putty (ms windows) or ssh from something else to connect to the target computer using the information you collected in steps 1 and 2. Login as root.

Do this to collect some information. Post either the text or a clear picture (screen grab or mobile phone) here for review.

1. Key in 'lsblk` and post the results here. I suspect we will only see the usb flash drive in this output.
2. Key in lspci -nn and post the results here.

I don’t have high hopes for the lspci command, but I’m hoping it will be able to read the hardware ID even if it doesn’t have a driver for it.

[MarkG]

@george1421 Thanks for the help … ohh Apple… on booting to the debug kernel I’m asked to ‘press Enter to continue’. However, it appears that as well no driver for the nvme, there’s also no driver for the keyboard. So, locating a USB keyboard I was able to determine the following:

[Wed Apr 03 root@fogclient ~]# lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    1  1.9G  0 disk 
`-sda1   8:1    1  121M  0 part 
[Wed Apr 03 root@fogclient ~]# lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:3ec4] (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x16) [8086:1901] (rev 07)
00:01.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x8) [8086:1905] (rev 07)
00:01.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x4) [8086:1909] (rev 07)
00:12.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a379] (rev 10)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a36d] (rev 10)
00:14.2 RAM memory [0500]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a36f] (rev 10)
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a360] (rev 10)
00:1b.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a340] (rev f0)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a338] (rev f0)
00:1e.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a328] (rev 10)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a313] (rev 10)
00:1f.4 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a323] (rev 10)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:a324] (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 460] [1002:67ef] (rev e3)
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device [1002:aae0]
02:00.0 Mass storage controller [0180]: Apple Inc. Device [106b:2005] (rev 01)
02:00.1 Non-VGA unclassified device [0000]: Apple Inc. Device [106b:1801] (rev 01)
02:00.2 Non-VGA unclassified device [0000]: Apple Inc. Device [106b:1802] (rev 01)
02:00.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Apple Inc. Device [106b:1803] (rev 01)
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited Device [14e4:4464] (rev 03)
04:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Alpine Ridge 4C 2015] [8086:1578] (rev 06)
05:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
05:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
05:02.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
05:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
06:00.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15eb] (rev 06)
07:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ec] (rev 06)
7a:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation DSL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Alpine Ridge 4C 2015] [8086:1578] (rev 06)
7b:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
7b:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
7b:02.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
7b:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ea] (rev 06)
7c:00.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15eb] (rev 06)
7d:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:15ec] (rev 06)