I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro Retina, and my goal is to have a clean triple-boot system of Mac, Linux Mint (Cinnamon) and Windows 8. I have succeeded in installing both Linux Mint and Windows 8; my challenge is getting the rEFInd bootloader screen to behave nicely. When I select Mac, it boots normally, but when I select either Linux or Windows, it goes into the Grub bootloader menu - something I do not want to see. I wrote to the developer of rEFInd, he said that this is coming from the Grub bootloader installed by Mint. I tried to remove and reinstall Mint, but did not find any option to NOT install Grub during the install process. So, my question for this forum is: What is the best way of handling this? I have found numerous suggestions, including:
1) Have rEFInd ignore the root folder by editing the refind.conf file
2) Uninstall Grub
3) Use Grub instead of rEFInd (not an option for me)
Does anyone have any tried and tested solution to this?
One more thing: after I removed and reinstalled Mint, now it just gives me the blinking cursor when I select Linux.
rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
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rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
Please run the Boot Info Script and post the RESULTS.txt file that it produces, either as a link or within code tags. That will answer some critical questions and may provide a way to give you a solution.
Re: rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
I have hit a problem with the Mint install (blinking cursor) and will need to reinstall tomorrow. I'll get back with the info once it is back.
Re: rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
I was finally able get it to boot into Mint by reinstalling the latest version of rEFInd (0.6.10); the results of the boot info script are shown here. Note that the Windows partition is not showing up because I removed it in my troubleshooting efforts. Interesting thing is that it is now booting into Mint correctly, but the rEFInd menu is incorrectly showing an additional Linux bootloader.
Code: Select all
Boot Info Script 0.61 [1 April 2012]
============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================
=> Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector
848238704 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be
found at this location.
=> Syslinux MBR (3.61-4.03) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.
sda1: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sda1 starts
at sector 0. But according to the info from fdisk,
sda1 starts at sector 40.
Operating System:
Boot files: /efi/linuxmint/grubx64.efi
sda2: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: hfsplus
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files:
sda3: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
sda4: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab
sdb1: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files:
============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================
Drive: sda _____________________________________________________________________
Disk /dev/sda: 500.3 GB, 500277790720 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60821 cylinders, total 977105060 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 1 409,639 409,639 ee GPT
/dev/sda2 * 409,640 879,186,623 878,776,984 af HFS / HFS+
/dev/sda3 879,450,112 910,700,111 31,250,000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 910,700,112 977,104,408 66,404,297 83 Linux
GUID Partition Table detected.
Partition Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors System
/dev/sda1 40 409,639 409,600 EFI System partition
/dev/sda2 409,640 879,186,623 878,776,984 Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) partition (Mac OS X)
/dev/sda3 879,450,112 910,700,111 31,250,000 Swap partition (Linux)
/dev/sda4 910,700,112 977,104,408 66,404,297 Data partition (Windows/Linux)
Drive: sdb _____________________________________________________________________
Disk /dev/sdb: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1946 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System
/dev/sdb1 2 31,266,815 31,266,814 b W95 FAT32
"blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________
Device UUID TYPE LABEL
/dev/sda1 67E3-17ED vfat EFI
/dev/sda2 1d22bded-eed4-3839-bd4e-53204213307f hfsplus Macintosh HD
/dev/sda3 db0e6c0f-3b4a-4967-9f3e-60067a9ba30e swap
/dev/sda4 9cddd13e-49ce-4c61-a984-22760b7cb996 ext4
/dev/sdb1 507B-1C0E vfat MICHAEL
================================ Mount points: =================================
Device Mount_Point Type Options
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat (rw)
/dev/sda4 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sdb1 /media/michael/MICHAEL vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush,uhelper=udisks2)
=========================== sda4/boot/grub/grub.cfg: ===========================
Re: rEFInd & Grub, MacBook triple-boot
The "extra Linux bootloader" may not be shown incorrectly. There are at least three possibilities for Linux boot loaders shown by rEFInd:
Once that's done, you can move on to installing Windows. (Don't worry about the extra rEFInd entries just yet.) You'll need to:
If it's all working, you can now start trimming your Linux options. If both a vmlinuz-* option and the grubx64.efi option are working, you can remove one of them. Uninstalling the grub-efi package, and perhaps manually removing the /boot/efi/EFI/linuxmint/grubx64.efi file (from Linux), is one way to get rid of the grubx64.efi option. A less radical method is to add "EFI/linuxmint" to the "dont_scan_dirs" option in refind.conf. If you want to boot Linux via GRUB rather than directly, you can uninstall the ext4fs driver that I told you to install earlier; or you can comment out the "scan_all_linux_kernels" option in refind.conf.
If you're still seeing an option to boot Linux via a BIOS-mode boot loader, the safest approach is to simply ignore it, whether or not the option works. Removing it requires guessing where the BIOS-mode boot code resides and wiping it out via "dd", which is both guesswork and risky. It can be done if you're determined to do so, though; post back if you need advice.
You can customize rEFInd's icons in various ways. See the bulleted list under "Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders" for details. If you want to give a Linux Mint icon to a kernel-boot option, the easiest way is likely to be to use tune2fs to give your Mint partition a label that includes "linuxmint" as a single word:
(Note that the device filename may well change if you do this after repartitioning for Windows, though.)
- A BIOS-mode GRUB. There's definitely one in the MBR of the disk, and there may be one in your Linux partition (/dev/sda4). This will show up in rEFInd as "Boot Linux from HD", if I recall the terminology it uses correctly. This method of booting, if it works now, is prone to fail as you adjust the system to boot Windows, so you shouldn't rely on it.
- An EFI-mode GRUB. This is definitely installed on your EFI System Partition (ESP; /dev/sda1) as EFI/linuxmint/grubx64.efi. This will show up in rEFInd as "Boot EFI\linuxmint\grubx64.efi from {volume name or description}". I suspect that this boot method is working for you now, but I'm not positive of that.
- A Linux kernel. You've presumably got one of these installed in /dev/sda4, although the Boot Info Script output isn't showing it for some reason. This will show up in rEFInd as "Boot boot\vmlinuz-{version} from {volume name or description}". It probably won't work unless you enter kernel options manually, at least not yet. It's conceivable you'll have two or more of these, one for each kernel installed.
Once that's done, you can move on to installing Windows. (Don't worry about the extra rEFInd entries just yet.) You'll need to:
- Resize your partition(s) to make room for a Windows partition.
- Create a FAT or NTFS partition for Windows.
- Create a new hybrid MBR. This can be tricky. The easiest way to do it is if you use OS X's Disk Utility to create your Windows partition (as FAT); however, that method may not be reliable or may produce something that's sub-optimal. The most flexible way to create a hybrid MBR is to use gdisk, as described in the link at the start of this bullet point. However you do it, be sure that your Windows partition resides in the hybrid MBR. Neither the Linux nor the OS X partitions need to be in it, although including them won't hurt. If you shrink the OS X partition to make room for Windows and use gdisk to create the new hybrid MBR, I recommend including the Windows partition and both the Linux swap and Linux root (/) partitions in the hybrid MBR.
- Install Windows normally.
If it's all working, you can now start trimming your Linux options. If both a vmlinuz-* option and the grubx64.efi option are working, you can remove one of them. Uninstalling the grub-efi package, and perhaps manually removing the /boot/efi/EFI/linuxmint/grubx64.efi file (from Linux), is one way to get rid of the grubx64.efi option. A less radical method is to add "EFI/linuxmint" to the "dont_scan_dirs" option in refind.conf. If you want to boot Linux via GRUB rather than directly, you can uninstall the ext4fs driver that I told you to install earlier; or you can comment out the "scan_all_linux_kernels" option in refind.conf.
If you're still seeing an option to boot Linux via a BIOS-mode boot loader, the safest approach is to simply ignore it, whether or not the option works. Removing it requires guessing where the BIOS-mode boot code resides and wiping it out via "dd", which is both guesswork and risky. It can be done if you're determined to do so, though; post back if you need advice.
You can customize rEFInd's icons in various ways. See the bulleted list under "Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders" for details. If you want to give a Linux Mint icon to a kernel-boot option, the easiest way is likely to be to use tune2fs to give your Mint partition a label that includes "linuxmint" as a single word:
Code: Select all
sudo tune2fs -L linuxmint /dev/sda4