When Mojave beta first became available I attempted to install on an external USB drive - which failed. Others on StackOverflow encountered the same.
I instead created a new 50 GB APFS container on my internal' Macintosh HD' drive and successfully installed Mojave. This has been running for 2 months plus, though with the latest beta (18A365a) I receive regular messages to the effect the volume/partition is running out of disk space (though 8 GB remains). I would now like to free the 50GB APFS volume space to be reabsorbed by the main 'Macintosh HD' volume.
Below are my machine specs and screen shots of the volumes/containers. I deleted the container using 'diskutil apfs deleteContainer' following viewing the container using 'diskutil apfs list' to get proper container name.
I select 'Container disk2' and the Volume +/- minus button is dimmed. There doesn't appear to be any means within the Disk Utility app to delete the container. I reboot using Recovery mode (command-R), though this remains dimmed and still no joy on delete.
How can I free these two containers (disk1 and disk2) so they revert to being part of the free pool for Macintosh HD?
The terminology is now much more confusing including (but not limited to):
partition
volume
container
HFS
APFS
Journaled
Extended
Disk Utility appears to need an upgrade to allow freely creating / deleting all variants without resorting to diskutil.
___
As an aside, these issues would not have exist if beta Mojave installed on an external USB drive.
Thanks for your help Quinn.
(oddly, I post .png files here though it appears they are filtered by the discussion group software) brian at appsird.net
Here is the results of 'diskutil apfs list' currently
$ diskutil apfs list
APFS Containers (3 found)
|
+-- Container disk1 DF1105B9-F010-456D-B744-88E0ED03B640
| ====================================================
| APFS Container Reference: disk1
| Size (Capacity Ceiling): 10000003072 B (10.0 GB)
| Capacity In Use By Volumes: 29700096 B (29.7 MB) (0.3% used)
| Capacity Not Allocated: 9970302976 B (10.0 GB) (99.7% free)
| |
| +-< Physical Store disk0s4 6785A359-60DA-451E-BB09-26C09C2DE473
| | -----------------------------------------------------------
| | APFS Physical Store Disk: disk0s4
| | Size: 10000003072 B (10.0 GB)
| |
| +-> No Volumes
|
+-- Container disk2 B5AA9972-A806-47A9-A656-2961EB3FC6C6
| ====================================================
| APFS Container Reference: disk2
| Size (Capacity Ceiling): 49865785344 B (49.9 GB)
| Capacity In Use By Volumes: 112353280 B (112.4 MB) (0.2% used)
| Capacity Not Allocated: 49753432064 B (49.8 GB) (99.8% free)
| |
| +-< Physical Store disk0s3 112A1808-866F-4480-9765-91BB2BE8EB78
| | -----------------------------------------------------------
| | APFS Physical Store Disk: disk0s3
| | Size: 49865785344 B (49.9 GB)
| |
| +-> No Volumes
|
+-- Container disk3 83473804-E2CB-488C-9B2E-44E0EEF10C18
====================================================
APFS Container Reference: disk3
Size (Capacity Ceiling): 190685569024 B (190.7 GB)
Capacity In Use By Volumes: 157970034688 B (158.0 GB) (82.8% used)
Capacity Not Allocated: 32715534336 B (32.7 GB) (17.2% free)
|
+-< Physical Store disk0s2 2AB3B641-FC98-4CA1-A18C-C6C1B1737B7F
| -----------------------------------------------------------
| APFS Physical Store Disk: disk0s2
| Size: 190685569024 B (190.7 GB)
|
+-> Volume disk3s1 18420E63-C93C-4710-AA9E-D88BA7CE0ABB
| ---------------------------------------------------
| APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s1 (No specific role)
| Name: Macintosh HD (Case-insensitive)
| Mount Point: /
| Capacity Consumed: 156205195264 B (156.2 GB)
| FileVault: Yes (Unlocked)
|
+-> Volume disk3s2 FEDC9F2B-F049-428F-A91E-045EC0561A98
| ---------------------------------------------------
| APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s2 (Preboot)
| Name: Preboot (Case-insensitive)
| Mount Point: Not Mounted
| Capacity Consumed: 46231552 B (46.2 MB)
| FileVault: No
|
+-> Volume disk3s3 93F73F91-CAB8-406B-8862-F8081DA426C4
| ---------------------------------------------------
| APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s3 (Recovery)
| Name: Recovery (Case-insensitive)
| Mount Point: Not Mounted
| Capacity Consumed: 512008192 B (512.0 MB)
| FileVault: No
|
+-> Volume disk3s4 90D60F6D-2A0F-476D-8C07-6EA642415C70
---------------------------------------------------
APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s4 (VM)
Name: VM (Case-insensitive)
Mount Point: /private/var/vm
Capacity Consumed: 1073766400 B (1.1 GB)
FileVault: No
