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Lion and rEFIt
- Thread starter gnhaku
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This looks to be a good place to post this question:
I repartitioned my Lion partition to install another os, leaving my bootcamp partition alone. However, the result is that Windows (Boot Camp) is now on disk0s6 and won't boot. The Bootcamp partition mounts when I'm running Lion and I can select it as the startup disk, but will tell me that I need to insert the Windows disk (which I do, but the system doesn't respond). Bootcamp does not show up as bootable disk if I hold down the option key during startup.
So, I stumbled upon rEFIt and now want to see if it can repair the problem. I made a bootable disk, started refit and went to the partitions icon. It suggested making changes to the GPT and MBR partitions. The changes looked like they would reduce the 6 sectors to 4... well, frankly, I have no idea what the suggestions meant so I declined. What I want to know is a) could this fix the problem with Boot Camp? b) Would this create problems with Lion? c) Would this erase the recovery function in Lion? (I'm not married to the recovery, but I have found it useful).
Thanks!
I repartitioned my Lion partition to install another os, leaving my bootcamp partition alone. However, the result is that Windows (Boot Camp) is now on disk0s6 and won't boot. The Bootcamp partition mounts when I'm running Lion and I can select it as the startup disk, but will tell me that I need to insert the Windows disk (which I do, but the system doesn't respond). Bootcamp does not show up as bootable disk if I hold down the option key during startup.
So, I stumbled upon rEFIt and now want to see if it can repair the problem. I made a bootable disk, started refit and went to the partitions icon. It suggested making changes to the GPT and MBR partitions. The changes looked like they would reduce the 6 sectors to 4... well, frankly, I have no idea what the suggestions meant so I declined. What I want to know is a) could this fix the problem with Boot Camp? b) Would this create problems with Lion? c) Would this erase the recovery function in Lion? (I'm not married to the recovery, but I have found it useful).
Thanks!
Well, no, it's kinda hijacking the thread because it's a whole new problem/question related to partitioning and installing a 3rd operating system. I think you should start another topic with a clear subject. The short answer is none of the tools you mentioned will resolve this, but gdisk can, by adding GPT partition 6 to MBR partition 2. And then using GRUB2 to boot both of your non-Mac OS's.
About gdisk, and hybrid MBRs. Note that you already have one as a result of your Boot Camp Assistant Windows installation.
http://rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html
To install Linux, I decided not to use Boot Camp. Instead, I shrunk my existing OSX partition using Disk Utility. With the disk space gained, I created a Linux partition and a small Refit partition.
After repartitionning my disk with the Lion bootable thumb drive (made using the link given above), I ended up with this:
I'm a newbe, too. I think the trouble I'm having is in the details. Everything I've read says the EFI partition is FAT. So I thought the rEFIt partition would be FAT, but your entry says Apple_HFS. Maybe this is why I cannot get it to work? The Linux partition says EFI, but what is the format type? Did you name that or did the system?
Thanks for you very helpful post! I have new ideas to explore.
After repartitionning my disk with the Lion bootable thumb drive (made using the link given above), I ended up with this:
Code:
diskutil list /dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
[COLOR="Red"] 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 265.6 GB disk0s2[/COLOR]
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
[COLOR="Purple"] 4: Apple_HFS rEFIt 939.5 MB disk0s5[/COLOR]
[COLOR="DarkGreen"] 5: EFI 52.4 GB disk0s6[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Red"]Red = Mac paritition[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Purple"]Purple = rEFIt partition[/COLOR]
[COLOR="DarkGreen"]Green = Linux partition[/COLOR]
All other partitions = danger don't touch !I'm a newbe, too. I think the trouble I'm having is in the details. Everything I've read says the EFI partition is FAT. So I thought the rEFIt partition would be FAT, but your entry says Apple_HFS. Maybe this is why I cannot get it to work? The Linux partition says EFI, but what is the format type? Did you name that or did the system?
Thanks for you very helpful post! I have new ideas to explore.
Code:
sudo gpt -r show /dev/rdisk0Paste the results, format with code tags using the # button in the toolbar.
Has anyone been able to get either reFit or reFind to work on a 2011 MacBook Air Core i7 machine?
I followed Rod's instructions very carefully, but it just will not work. The GUI boot menu never shows up - it just boots right into OSX.
I tried installing on both the OSX partition and the ESP partition...no luck either way.
I followed Rod's instructions very carefully, but it just will not work. The GUI boot menu never shows up - it just boots right into OSX.
I tried installing on both the OSX partition and the ESP partition...no luck either way.
Not to mention your a dick cheese for doing it on all your macs at once never trying it before, then freaking out....
Not to mention your a dick cheese for doing it on all your macs at once never trying it before, then freaking out....
Uhhh, first of all, thank you for bringing up a one year old quote of mine
Now I remember how crazy I was, lol.Anyways, the reason I tried this on all of my Macs, which was my old Macbook Pro, iMac, and my old white Macbook, was because, as I said, I wanted to see if it was my Macbook's problem or not. However, I got everything settled, so it's alright now.
AND, I don't think I freaked out. I just did the right thing (disk repair, and some other maintenance check.)
rEFIt works fine for me on a 2012 MacBook Air with an i7 and Lion.
Has anyone been able to get either reFit or reFind to work on a 2011 MacBook Air Core i7 machine?
I followed Rod's instructions very carefully, but it just will not work. The GUI boot menu never shows up - it just boots right into OSX.
I tried installing on both the OSX partition and the ESP partition...no luck either way.
rEFIT is no longer maintained. You want rEFInd.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/
I have a clean Lion install on a MacPro, no previous rEFIT.
If I install rEFIT or rEFInd, will it work or do I have to follow one of the previous suggestions?
If I install rEFIT or rEFInd, will it work or do I have to follow one of the previous suggestions?
An easy way to setup a triple-boot mac without rEFIt!
For anyone who is still interested in how to setup a triple-boot Mac (or just install Linux beside Mac OS X), there is now a really easy way to achieve this without even using an additional bootmanager such as rEFIt or rEFInd!
I posted about this in my blog.
It's pretty simple! ;-)
For anyone who is still interested in how to setup a triple-boot Mac (or just install Linux beside Mac OS X), there is now a really easy way to achieve this without even using an additional bootmanager such as rEFIt or rEFInd!
I posted about this in my blog.
It's pretty simple! ;-)
I have done this many times, and it's pretty simply dangerous as described.
The safest way to do this rather unsafe thing, which depends on hybrid MBR, is for Windows to be last because it is the only one that demands an MBR entry for itself. Mac OS X and Linux will honor the GPT entries, so you can stuff those partitions into the MBR entry 1, type 0xEE (the protective partition). That has to be done manually because the main tool that syncs MBR and GPT is gptsync, and it's understandably not very smart about how it does its job: it just adds the first four GPT partitions to the MBR. Later GPT partitions aren't protected.
The best bet for the near future (hopefully) is EFI booting Windows and Linux, meaning we don't have to deal with the CSM or MBR anymore. Fedora 17 expressly has Mac EFI support, including an selection icon in the Startup Disk panel. And Windows 8 seems to have substantially better, although not flawless, Mac EFI support as well.
The safest way to do this rather unsafe thing, which depends on hybrid MBR, is for Windows to be last because it is the only one that demands an MBR entry for itself. Mac OS X and Linux will honor the GPT entries, so you can stuff those partitions into the MBR entry 1, type 0xEE (the protective partition). That has to be done manually because the main tool that syncs MBR and GPT is gptsync, and it's understandably not very smart about how it does its job: it just adds the first four GPT partitions to the MBR. Later GPT partitions aren't protected.
The best bet for the near future (hopefully) is EFI booting Windows and Linux, meaning we don't have to deal with the CSM or MBR anymore. Fedora 17 expressly has Mac EFI support, including an selection icon in the Startup Disk panel. And Windows 8 seems to have substantially better, although not flawless, Mac EFI support as well.
I really don't understand the problem. Why should it be "pretty simply dangerous"?
Could you please explain that in more detail?
And what do you mean by "Later GPT partitions aren't protected."? Of course only for the first four partitions there will be a corresponding entry in the MBR (that's why it is called "hybrid MBR"). But that's all we need, isn't it?
I don't see any problems if you do it just the way I described it in my blog, with Windows on the first partition after Mac OS X (that's actually the 4. partition on the disk because of the EFI system partition and the recovery partition). Grub gets installed - as suggested from the Ubuntu installer - to the first sector of the system disk (and some of the code gets installed to the "reserved BIOS boot partition").
So if you select the Windows icon in the Mac bootmanager the grub code in the MBR will be executed.
Could you please explain that in more detail?
And what do you mean by "Later GPT partitions aren't protected."? Of course only for the first four partitions there will be a corresponding entry in the MBR (that's why it is called "hybrid MBR"). But that's all we need, isn't it?
I don't see any problems if you do it just the way I described it in my blog, with Windows on the first partition after Mac OS X (that's actually the 4. partition on the disk because of the EFI system partition and the recovery partition). Grub gets installed - as suggested from the Ubuntu installer - to the first sector of the system disk (and some of the code gets installed to the "reserved BIOS boot partition").
So if you select the Windows icon in the Mac bootmanager the grub code in the MBR will be executed.
The hybrid MBR is non-standard. It's incompatible with the UEFI spec, which defines the GPT. Apple's own tech note says a GPT aware application should refuse to modify such a disk, and says it is not a compliant GPT disk.
The result is every OS will interpret this disk differently. As you now have three operating systems on the disk, you increase the chances of misinterpretation of the disk layout. People on these forums are constantly running into problems, the majority of which involving data loss are due to the hybrid MBR.
Further there is no supporting disks larger than 2TB with this scheme either. Triple boot system encourage larger disk sizes that can't be properly supported.
Not of course - there are other ways to do this, including stuffing all but the last GPT partition into the PMBR entry, and only the last GPT entry into the MBR. That protects the whole disk better than a Windows 2nd, Linux 3rd partition scheme.
In that case, you end up with the sectors making up the Linux partitions unaccounted for in the MBR. To an MBR application and operating system, those sectors are free space and fair game to overwrite. This is precisely the problem people have when using Windows applications to resize their Windows volumes: a common problem on numerous forums about Boot Camp, because Apple fails to warn users against using such utilities, and provides no utility themselves to do this.
Ergo it is better to put Windows 7 in the last GPT partition, adding only it to the MBR, and setting the first MBR partition, type 0xEE, defined by sectors that make up the GPT plus all partitions other than Windows. That way only Windows is exposed in the MBR. And the MBR doesn't imply free space is available either.
I'm well aware of how this will work. Until it breaks and then there's data loss. And it has a high degree of breakage for all the reasons I state. This is not a proprietary partition scheme, it is a non-standard partition scheme that is simply not recommended because it is fragile.
Thanks for your answer and for the idea to only add the Windows 7 partition to the MBR. That's a good idea.
So, personally for me there aren't any problems as long as I'm aware of my partitions scheme and what's going on. ;-)
Of course I understand that it's dangerous if you don't really understand how everything works. So I think setting up a triple-boot Mac is only for people who have a good knowledge of what's really going on. Otherwise you shouldn't do it.
For me it will be a simple alternative to my more complex way with rEFIt (as I described in my first blog post where I also changed the MBR entries). ;-)
But even my complex solution has worked out pretty well and I haven't had any problems so far.
I know but I don't have any problems with that. ;-) Of course I'm aware that I should never change the partitions from within Windows because these changes will only be reflected in the MBR not in the GPT.
That's right, but why should I ever overwrite the free space as long as I know that there isn't really free space. I mean, I setup a triple-boot system and therefore I know that the free space represents my Linux partitions.
So, personally for me there aren't any problems as long as I'm aware of my partitions scheme and what's going on. ;-)
Of course I understand that it's dangerous if you don't really understand how everything works. So I think setting up a triple-boot Mac is only for people who have a good knowledge of what's really going on. Otherwise you shouldn't do it.
For me it will be a simple alternative to my more complex way with rEFIt (as I described in my first blog post where I also changed the MBR entries). ;-)
But even my complex solution has worked out pretty well and I haven't had any problems so far.
For this to be safe, it also needs to be the last partition on the disk (and in the GPT).
Many people don't know this and are making fatal data mistakes as a result.
Because you aren't the one who would do this. The kernel itself sees this as free space because it's not allocated in the MBR. Applications will see this region as free space.
The problem I have with your suggestion is that you're proposing it's simple/easy, implying anyone can do it, but then when I point out risks you say it's not risk FOR YOU because you know better. Well sorry, but most people don't know how this works, yet you're giving advice that routinely leads to data loss for people. And that is not a winky winky smiley face bit of a suggestion. It's like giving people razor blades and telling them to go play on the free way, then giving them a smiley face.
Ergo, it is not pretty simple.
For me it will be a simple alternative to my more complex way with rEFIt (as I described in my first blog post where I also changed the MBR entries). ;-)
But even my complex solution has worked out pretty well and I haven't had any problems so far.
Uh huh. Lots of people have had problems. This comes up every single day in one form or another on various forums on Boot Camp. And that's just Mac OS and Windows, let alone adding more complexity with Linux.
In my opinion, users should use VM's instead of using hybrid MBRs. When we have sanctioned EFI bootable Windows and Linux, this becomes much much safer.
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worked for me + research
Just wanted to say that rEFIt-0.14 kicked in fine for me on Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.1 using the automatic install method (rEFIt.mpkg) and then running (it didn't work until then):
And for those who can use my research...
Inside the script, the final command bit looks like this:
the "set" command just sets verbose mode for the script, BUT the "bless" command controls boot options, and in this case sets a folder to check for boot code (from man bless):
Just wanted to say that rEFIt-0.14 kicked in fine for me on Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.1 using the automatic install method (rEFIt.mpkg) and then running (it didn't work until then):
Code:
sudo /efi/refit/enable-always.shAnd for those who can use my research...
Inside the script, the final command bit looks like this:
Code:
set -x
sudo bless --folder "$DIR" --file "$DIR/$LOADERNAME" --labelfile "$DIR/refit.vollabel" --setBootthe "set" command just sets verbose mode for the script, BUT the "bless" command controls boot options, and in this case sets a folder to check for boot code (from man bless):
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When rEFIt fails it can render your computer unusable. If that is no big deal for you... then you must be some kind of Zen monk.
It happened to me without doing anything strange. Installed it, used it to go to Mac OS, the used to go to Bootcamp, then total fail. The only way to solve that was to format both OS partitions and reinstall everything again. Luckily I had a third partition with the important data stored.
rEFIt is no longer maintained. rEFInd should be used. If you're finding issues with it, you should submit feedback to the maintainer, he's very responsive.
Hello, yesterday i got my new iMac. I have installed Windows 8 on the iMac, too. So it works with Mountain Lion and Windows 8.
Today i have searched a Alternate to rEFIt and i found rEFInd here. It works well.
But i have a little problem and i hope to find a solution here. If i make a reboot rEFInd view me all Volumes. Recover Volume etc. Look the Picture, please.
It is possible that rEFInd only view me the Mac OS X and the Windows 8 Volume?
And excuse me for my bad English. Thank you.
Today i have searched a Alternate to rEFIt and i found rEFInd here. It works well.
But i have a little problem and i hope to find a solution here. If i make a reboot rEFInd view me all Volumes. Recover Volume etc. Look the Picture, please.
It is possible that rEFInd only view me the Mac OS X and the Windows 8 Volume?
And excuse me for my bad English. Thank you.