Cannot boot into rEFIt (to choose Ubuntu) on Mac after Yosemite upgrade

Question

I've upgraded to Yosemite on MacBook Pro (13 inch, mid 2012 model). Since doing so, I cannot boot into rEFIt; no OS options are available; it just boots into Mac OSX yosemite directly.

• I tried reinstalling rEFIt, but it didn't work.
• I tried installing rEFInd with the --esp argument as explained in the manual, but that didn't work either.
• I installed rEFInd without any argument, just ran the install.sh, and the message shows it can be installed successfully but nothing changed.
• I installed rEFInd with --alldrivers, and the message shows it can be installed successfully but nothing changed.
• I ran diskutil corestorage revert /dev/disk1 as explained on this site, and after that I would get just a white screen when trying to boot. I repaired it from recovery --> startup disk.

Ubuntu on Mac is my main OS, so I need to get this working.

Here is the content of my partition inspector from rEFIt.

Current GPT partition table:
 #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
 2         409640    331171351  Mac OS X HFS+
 3      331171352    332440887  Mac OS X Boot
 4      332440888    333710423  Mac OS X HFS+
 5      333711360    580364287  Unknown
 6      580364288    592750591  Linux Swap
 7      592750592   1465147391  Unknown

Current MBR partition table:
 # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1              1   1465149167  ee  EFI Protective

MBR contents:
Boot Code: GRUB

Partition at LBA 40:
Boot Code: None
File System: Unknown
Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)

Partition at LBA 409640:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 331171352:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot

Partition at LBA 332440888:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 333711360:
Boot Code: None
File System: ext4
Listed in GPT as partition 5, type Unknown

Partition at LBA 580364288:
Boot Code: None
File System: Unknown
Listed in GPT as partition 6, type Linux Swap

Partition at LBA 592750592:
Boot Code: None
File System: ext4
Listed in GPT as partition 7, type Unknown

Answer 1

Did you reinstall rEFIt manually?

If you didn't, try running this on the OSX Terminal

cd /efi/refit   
./enable.sh

When prompted for your password, use the one Yosemite asks you for while trying to install new software.

After that, you should see the boot menu after you restart. When you choose to load Ubuntu from the boot menu, you may be greeted by the grub rescue> terminal" instead of a normal boot, let me know.

By the way, you can also press the option key (alt) just after you hit the power button, and there you'll see some options, including rEFIt. This has the drawback that it must be done on every boot, hence the preference for the terminal solution.

Answer 2

I had the same problem with a Late 2013 Macbook pro. rEFInd worked for me with the command ./install.sh --esp --alldrivers, although my first impression was that I had failed. I just had to wait ~1 minute for the rEFInd menu to pop up during the boot.

To avoid this long wait at boot, you can make the following adjustments to your rEFInd install.

From OS X:

1. Mount your esp partition.

   mkdir /Volumes/EFI && sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volume/EFI
   

2. Rename the rEFInd folder BOOT. eg. /Volumes/EFI/EFI/refind becomes /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT
3. Rename the refind_x64.efi file to bootx64.efi. eg. /Volumes/EFI/EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi becomes /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi

Umount and reboot. Enjoy! :)

Answer 3

Booting your Mac via rEFIt please open a terminal and try running this command after installation of rEFit:

cd /efi/refit
./enable.sh

and reboot!

Answer 4

Just finished a successful Mac/Yosemite Ubuntu dual boot update. Basically the guidance of http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/yosemite.html is fine.

But note that from the GRUB choice available under ReFIT or its REFIND successor, one could more laboriously boot with:

grub> ls

to display the partitions. For the partitions above, retention of the Linux file system would be reported by (gpt4 is really the fifth partition):

grub> ls (hd0,gpt4)/

and the standard Ubuntu grub menu will be called up by

grub> configfile (hd0,gpt4)/boot/grub/grub.cfg

The further comments herein provide a new option within the REFIND choices.

Note within the partition info above:

Partition at LBA 331171352:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot

Partition at LBA 332440888:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Mac OS X HFS+ 

---

The "partition 3" contains the new Recovery Partition version 10.10, with LVM Boot capability as mentioned in yosemite.html.
The "partition 4" is the old Recovery Partition version 10.9 which is no longer necessary! If can be reformatted to HFS+, and REFIND can be installed therein.

Hold down the "option" key upon a reboot and it will report icons for 10.9 and 10.10, Previously under Maverick, a Windows icon was actually for the Ubuntu partition, and I could thus boot Ubuntu. But with the Yosemite update, this is no longer effective.

For reasons obscure the standard "Disk Utiliy" did not report separately report the two Recovery partitions. But my memory may not be sound on this point. If both Recovery partitions are displayed by Disk Utility, the gdisk delete procedure mentioned below can be skipped. Just use the Disk Utility ERASE option to reformat partition 4, to HFS+ , with name "efi" .

As a preliminary install http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ and of course the most recent REFIND version. Use gdisk to CAREFULLY delete (in this case) Partition 4 (the Mac OS X HFS+) being careful not to take out its Recovery 10.10 replacement (Mac OS X Boot). Their should be a normal MAC boot subsequently, starting within the retained partition 3, and under LVM control, bringing up the main "partition 2" MAC installation.

Now use the standard "Disk Utility" to make a HFS+ partition in the free space, which could be named "efi". It will show as /Volumes/efi/ and be used for the ReFind installation.

Within my unzipped folder Downloads/refind-bin-0.8.3/, there was run:

$ sudo ./install.sh  --alldrivers --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s4

--- reporting ----
Installing rEFInd on OS X....
UnmountEsp = 0
Installing rEFInd to the partition mounted at /Volumes/efi
Copied rEFInd binary files
Copying sample configuration file as refind.conf; edit this file to configure
rEFInd.
WARNING: If you have an Advanced Format disk, *DO NOT* attempt to check the
bless status with 'bless --info', since this is known to cause disk corruption
on some systems!!
Installation has completed successfully.
--------

Editing the refind.conf.sample provided, the yosemite.html instruction was followed to change:

dont_scan_volumes "Recovery HD"

INTO

dont_scan_volumes foo,bar

While a delay way not be necessary on your System, there was also done a change:

# scan_delay 5

INTO

scan_delay 1

This enabled appearance of the MAC boot icon later, without having to ESC for a rescan of the partitions. The saved file was called refind.conf.edit My text editor is "gedit" for MAC, but any text editor should do, that saves to plain text.

Finally the edit was copied (on one line) as below, thus overwriting the original established during the install:

$ sudo cp refind.conf.edit /Volumes/efi/System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf

Check that your edits are indeed within with (say):

$ less /Volumes/efi/System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf

Upon reboot, the REFIND menu came up with Ubuntu kernel boot choices. There are a couple of non-functional icon choices, which I have not yet eliminated from the display. But the Ubuntu boots are fine.

PLEASE do read all the documentation mentioned above CAREFULLY. My terse comments herein are NOT a sufficient guide. But to summarise:

1. if REFIT has been retained, a Ubuntu boot could be likely be done with:

   grub> configfile (hd0,gpt4)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
   

2. To get a lazier bootup, work through the REFIND installation steps, and learn from the process.

Answer 5

If Ubuntu is really important to you, I would reccomend installing grub. I believe you could install grub with boot-repair. More about boot-repair here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair.