Whoops! How do I recreate the recovery partition?

[plentyoftimeto69]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro 2,1 running El Capitan with the EFI modifications from this forum. Runs awesome! In fact it ran so awesome that I treated to an SSD and used SuperDuper! to image the OS over. Apparently I only imaged the OS over, not the recovery partition, and I'd like to recreate that. Can someone give me a 101 on recreating the recovery partition or point me to a link with directions that'll actually work for this EFI modified hack job? FWIW I have an image of the whole hard drive back from when I first installed El Capitan, so if need be I can probably copy the recovery partition out of there. I'm on 10.11.6 and the image is 10.11.4. I don't know if that makes a difference. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

Google works well for finding solutions like this one:
https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/recovery-partition-os-x/

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

Google works well for finding solutions like this one:
https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/recovery-partition-os-x/

Thanks for the Google tip. I had no idea.

Will this recovery partition script replace the EFI modifications I have in place or not? I'm sure that works fine on systems running an unmodified boot, but I'm not trying to 86 those mods by haphazardly running 3rd party apps like that.

Also, how does one download the El Capitan installer these days? My MacBook is running Mojave, so it simply won't download it, and any combination of contol, option, or command+click on the El Capitan system won't download the installer anymore. I just get prompted that El Capitan is not supported on that system no matter what.

 

[CoastalOR]

Also, how does one download the El Capitan installer these days? My MacBook is running Mojave, so it simply won't download it, and any combination of contol, option, or command+click on the El Capitan system won't download the installer anymore. I just get prompted that El Capitan is not supported on that system no matter what.

Why not download it on the 2008 Mac Pro running El Capitan?

See Step 4 for the El Capitan link to the App Store.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206886

 

[casperes1996]

Will this recovery partition script replace the EFI modifications I have in place or not? I'm sure that works fine on systems running an unmodified boot, but I'm not trying to 86 those mods by haphazardly running 3rd party apps like that.

It's a script. You can look through everything it does. As far as I can see, there's no reason it'd disrupt your modifications.

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

Why not download it on the 2008 Mac Pro running El Capitan?

See Step 4 for the El Capitan link to the App Store.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206886

I've tried every combination of control, option, command+click and I always get this error.

 

[CoastalOR]

I've tried every combination of control, option, command+click and I always get this error.

Just clicking the download button should be all you need, no key combinations necessary.

The El Capitan download from the App Store to your supported 2008 MP should work fine. I've tested downloading El Capitan from that link in the past. The only thing I can think of is that the "EFI modifications" you have done is causing a problem with the App Store permitting the download.

Another option is to purchase a USB El Capitan installer from Amazon or eBay.

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

Clicking the download button gives me the same error. This system was never supported by El Capitan. It's a gen 1 Mac Pro that's modified to run El Capitan per the big ole thread on this forum.

 

[CoastalOR]

Clicking the download button gives me the same error. This system was never supported by El Capitan. It's a gen 1 Mac Pro that's modified to run El Capitan per the big ole thread on this forum.

Got it, you have 2,1 that was from APRIL 2007 to JANUARY 2008. Yeah, the unpatched max OS for yours was 10.7.5. Sorry, can't help.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

It's all good. I found a thread on Reddit with a download link for the El Cap installer. I'll stash it on my NAS for safe keeping.

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

So that script ran successfully and appears to have created a recovery partition for me. Problem is that it used the stock 10.11.6 installer, so the boot.efi is incorrect. I mounted the volume using 'diskutil mount /dev/disk0s3' and it mounted, but I can't rename the boot.efi or delete it. Am I missing something stupid about mounting that volume as read/write?

Edit - Only the recovery bootloader is wrong. The script didn't modify the EFI for the regular OS, so I can still boot up into El Cap fine.

 

[casperes1996]

So that script ran successfully and appears to have created a recovery partition for me. Problem is that it used the stock 10.11.6 installer, so the boot.efi is incorrect. I mounted the volume using 'diskutil mount /dev/disk0s3' and it mounted, but I can't rename the boot.efi or delete it. Am I missing something stupid about mounting that volume as read/write?

Edit - Only the recovery bootloader is wrong. The script didn't modify the EFI for the regular OS, so I can still boot up into El Cap fine.

Pretty sure that when mounted with default mount privileges, users don't have write access, but if you use sudo you should have permission

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

Pretty sure that when mounted with default mount privileges, users don't have write access, but if you use sudo you should have permission

That's what I thought, but no dice.

[doublepost=1549576731][/doublepost]Nailed it! I was 99% there, but the boot.efi itself is "locked" so I had to issue a 'sudo chflags nouchg' before I could modify it. And like that I have a working recovery again!

 

[casperes1996]

That's what I thought, but no dice.

View attachment 820511
[doublepost=1549576731][/doublepost]Nailed it! I was 99% there, but the boot.efi itself is "locked" so I had to issue a 'sudo chflags nouchg' before I could modify it. And like that I have a working recovery again!

View attachment 820514

Brillant. Glad you worked it out