Getting desperate here, need some help http://cdn.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/frown.png
Am not sure if this is the right forum, or if i can post this here even…
i have received a lot of help from this forum, hoping someone has an idea-
background:
I have a late 2012 imac, running OS X 10.10
Also i had Xubuntu & OpenSuse running as secondary OSs
I was using refind & everything was rosy.
Recently i updated opensuse 13.1 to 13.2 through a live USB.
This basically zapped my refind & goes directly to GRUB2 bootloader.
Now GRUB shows me options (and advanced options) for Xubuntu & opensuse **13.1 **onlyThough 13.2 was installed as an upgrade, it doesn’t show up.
13.1 doesn’t boot either even after choosing it in GRUB.
Xubuntu loads without problems.
Now the issues am having:
The Magic keyboard doesn’t seem to be ‘active’ during the boot process, so pressing the ‘option’ key does not do anything.
I also think that GRUB is not recognising any other bootable USBs either.
How do i go about restoring OS X and/or refind?
Refind website says it’s recommended to install refind via OSX if running on a mac as installing via Linux will corrupt the partitions…further
is there any alternate to pressing ‘option’ during boot?
(i have a normal USB keyboard connected)
It is the known problem that upgrade does not change bootloader title, so it could still be 13.2.
13.1 doesn’t boot either even after choosing it in GRUB.
And what happens?
I also think that GRUB is not recognising any other bootable USBs either.
What do you mean “recognize”? grub.cfg configuration is static file that is built once; so anything you connect during boot won’t normally appear there unless it is specially created to actively scan for new devices. But it is always possible to boot from any device using command line
is there any alternate to pressing ‘option’ during boot?
(i have a normal USB keyboard connected)
When you are in grub menu go to command line (press character ‘c’) and type
Thank you @arvidjaar
The issue seems to have been sorted for now… partially…
The simplest solutions evade at times.
what i did-
In the grub menu i was trying to see if i could do something in the command line interface…
Just typed exit & immediately i was popped back onto refind.
Immediately booted into OS X & reinstalled refind…
can’t believe i didn’t try it earlier…
however, i am still not able to boot into opensuse or xubuntu now…
When you are in grub menu go to command line (press character ‘c’) and type
a) can i completely do away with GRUB & only use refind for OS X & Opensuse?
and make sure that future updates would not screw things up?
b) i tried pressing ‘option’ in my magic keyboard as well as ‘alt’ in a regular USB keyboard.
still wouldn’t detect. (this really isn’t related to opensuse or linux, would be good to know if someone has had this situation)
As far as I know, that will work. But there are a few things to watch for.
The main problem is that “refind” won’t know when the kernel has been updated or the “initrd” has been reconstructed. It is going to use the copy in your EFI partition. So it is up to you to keep that up to date.
Some updates regenerate the “initrd”. If you fail to copy the updated “initrd”, then you might be still using some buggy software loaded from the old “initrd”. It will probably still all work, but perhaps a security hole won’t have been completely fixed until you copy the updated “initrd”.
After a kernel update, you will still be running the old kernel until you copy both the new kernel and its “initrd” file. I’m not sure it you need to update your “refind” configuration for that. Again, the system will probably still work with the old kernel and “initrd”, and it should not delete the old kernel as long as you are running it. But best to check occasionally, and do that copy when needed.
I’m sure you can arrange to start up into refind, but you can’t “do away with” GRUB since refind is just a boot manager, not a boot loader. Refind still has to run grub in order to boot into linux.
If you are willing to repartition and reinstall, something you might try is to set up your disk with two small (a couple Gb) partitions, an OS/X partition (and its rescue partition), and a linux partition. Do this from the OS/X installer and make them all hfs+ initially, for convenience. Install OS/X yosemite into its partition. Install refind using --ownhfs into one of the small partitions. Boot from the opensuse installer DVD and tell it to use the linux partition for root and the other small partition for /boot/efi. After that runs, restart with option-startup and boot back into OS/X. Re-bless refind (see the refind docs). If refind isn’t showing you the OS/X boot icon, check out the refind page on Yosemite (I had to add a dont_scan_volumes foo,bar, to get mine to work, I also had to add a brief scan delay). You should now start up into refind and use that to boot either OS/X or opensuse.
The reason for the extra partitions: the refind partition isolates refind from OS/X; Yosemite is using some sort of LVM setup that really made a hash of my boot setup when I first upgraded. The boot/efi partition is for grub so that it can work in a GPT-partitioned, EFI boot environment. I use this setup on an “early 2009” Mac Pro and it is working well so far. (I am using separate drives for the OS/X stuff vs the linux stuff, but I doubt that it makes any difference.)
