I'm on a MacBookAir5,2 (2012) and I've been running Ubuntu along side Mac OS X for some time. I used rEFIt when I first installed Ubuntu and that worked fine.
As I started working with Docker, I outgrew the disk space available and decided to get a new SSD drive. I did that, swapped the disks and installed Ubuntu 14.10.
After this point, I've fiddled with rEFInd (as rEFIt is not maintained) and I've read lot of Rod Smith's pages
However, now I want Ubuntu only and won't boot anything else on this machine. But somehow, what I think I tell efibootmgr
to do, it won't. The problem is that rEFInd isn't run after booting. The only way I can boot my system is pressing the alt-key on booting, and selecting rEFInd on a USB stick. This works just fine though, no issues at all with that approach - it's just a bit inconvenient. :-)
If I boot without the USB stick attached, all I get is the grey screen with nothing being displayed. It stays grey "forever" (I've not waited much longer than 20 minutes).
My SSD contains four partitions:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8 Partition table scan: MBR: hybrid BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sda: 937703088 sectors, 447.1 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): B30ED5AD-A6B6-4FF9-9CC4-1F440536FB9F Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 937703054 Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries Total free space is 264949 sectors (129.4 MiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition 2 409640 195722143 93.1 GiB AF00 Macintosh HD 3 195985408 921180159 345.8 GiB EF00 LINUX 4 921180160 937701375 7.9 GiB 0700 SWAP
and I actually wiped out all files in the ESP as a measure to narrow down the issue. What I have now is efibootmgr
reporting:
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0000
Boot0000* rEFInd Boot Manager HD(1,28,64000,7fa6ae3f-d9a7-4411-838a-1d0133b9993a)File(\EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi)
BootFFFF* ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1f,2)SATA(0,0,0)HD(2,64028,e066090,00007690-046d-0000-175e-0000ca5e0000)File(\System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi)
and
root@fredrik-mbair:~# tree /boot/efi/ | grep -v png /boot/efi/ └── EFI ├── refind │ ├── icons │ ├── keys │ │ ├── altlinux.cer │ │ ├── canonical-uefi-ca.der │ │ ├── fedora-ca.cer │ │ ├── openSUSE-UEFI-CA-Certificate.cer │ │ ├── refind.cer │ │ └── SLES-UEFI-CA-Certificate.cer │ ├── refind.conf │ └── refind_x64.efi └── tools 5 directories, 68 files
Last piece of information is this: When I boot with USB stick detached and press alt, I get one (1) hard drive icon with the text Windows under it. If I select that one, the screen blacks out and I get a white blinking cursor (underline character) in the top left corner of the screen, like 80x25 lines or similar console. Nothing happens after that. The "rEFInd Boot Manager" option doesn't appear.
I have no idea where the "Windows" option comes from, and I don't know what the FFFF option is either.
root@fredrik-mbair:~# efibootmgr -b FFFF -B
invalid hex value FFFF
Since I won't use anything but a single Ubuntu OS and Linux kernel, I would be fine with gummiboot but I'm not sure how that's going to help when efibootmgr
can't get rEFInd to be run at boot ...
Last attempt at running install.sh
(installed from PPA) gives this output:
root@fredrik-mbair:~# /usr/share/refind/install.sh Installing rEFInd on Linux.... ESP was found at /boot/efi using vfat Found rEFInd installation in /boot/efi/EFI/refind; upgrading it. Copied rEFInd binary files Notice: Backed up existing icons directory as icons-backup. Existing refind.conf file found; copying sample file as refind.conf-sample to avoid overwriting your customizations. rEFInd has been set as the default boot manager. Existing //boot/refind_linux.conf found; not overwriting. Installation has completed successfully.
I have no idea on where to go next.