Install rEFInd on another partition

Question

I recently tried to install rEFInd onto my Mac but it could not boot into the Ubuntu disk. To uninstall It I formatted my drive and reinstalled OS X along with my backup.

To avoid this issue again I would like to install it onto another partition. How would I do this?

Here is my disk layout

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            217.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data LINUX                   15.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  17.1 GB    disk0s5

I would like to install rEFInd onto disk0s5 and linux ubuntu on disk0s4 if this helps

Thanks

Answer 1

This answer applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10). If you are using El Capitan (OS X 10.11), then you would be better of installing rEFInd in a EFI partition.

In your example, the command would be as shown below.

./install.sh  --alldrivers  --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s5.

I assume disk0s5 has been formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I don't think I would use a 17.1 GB partition. The rEFInd partition on my Mac is 134 MB in size.

If you need to write to disk0s5 while booted to Ubuntu, you may have to disable journaling. This usually happens when you need to modify refind.conf.

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.

1. Highlight the partition.
2. Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
3. From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
4. Release the "alt/option" key.
5. You may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility to see the change.

To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application.