<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
- <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 4/17/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.6</p>
+ <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 4/19/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.7</p>
<p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
<h2>Installing rEFInd Using Mac OS X</h2>
</a>
-<p class="sidebar">One of the reasons I've abandoned rEFIt's GUI installation tools for Mac OS X is that there are several bug reports (such as <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3147364&group_id=161917&atid=821764">this one</a> and <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3218104&group_id=161917&atid=821764">this one</a>) that the rEFIt installer may be causing filesystem corruption on disks over about 500 MiB. I don't have such a disk on my Mac, so I can't test solutions. Rather than risk other peoples' hard disks, I thought it best to revert to a manual installation proceudure that will, I hope, be less likely to cause problems.</p>
+<p class="sidebar">One of the reasons I've abandoned rEFIt's GUI installation tools for Mac OS X is that there are several bug reports (such as <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3147364&group_id=161917&atid=821764">this one</a> and <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3218104&group_id=161917&atid=821764">this one</a>) that the rEFIt installer may be causing filesystem corruption on disks over about 500 MiB. I don't have such a disk on my Mac, so I can't test solutions. Rather than risk other peoples' hard disks, I thought it best to revert to a manual installation proceudure that will, I hope, be less likely to cause problems. I've received reports that rEFInd doesn't have rEFIt's disk-corruption problems, so the manual installation procedure, although less convenient, seems to have paid dividends in the form of safety.</p>
-<p>The procedure for installing rEFInd on a Mac is similar to that for installing it under Linux, except that you can (and probably should) install it to the OS X's system directory or some other HFS+ partition rather than to the ESP, and you must use the <tt>bless</tt> utility rather than <tt>efibootmgr</tt>. To be precise, you should follow these steps:</p>
+<p>The procedure for installing rEFInd on a Mac is similar to that for installing it under Linux, except that you can (and probably should) install it to OS X's system partition or some other HFS+ partition rather than to the ESP, and you must use the <tt>bless</tt> utility rather than <tt>efibootmgr</tt>. To be precise, you should follow these steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>If you want to install rEFInd on your ESP, you must first mount it. You can do this by typing <b><tt>mkdir /Volumes/esp</tt></b> followed by <b><tt>sudo mount_msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/esp</tt></b>. Note that this step is optional, and in fact I've had problems blessing a boot loader on the ESP, so I don't recommend doing this. Also, you may need to change <tt>/dev/disk0s1</tt> to something else if your ESP is at an unusual location. Use a tool such as my <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/">GPT fdisk (<tt>gdisk</tt>)</a> to examine your partition table to find your ESP if necessary.</li>
-<li>Type <b><tt>sudo mkdir -p /efi/refind</tt></b> to create a suitable directory for rEFInd. If you want to place rEFInd on your ESP, you should adjust the pathname appropriately, as in <tt>/Volumes/esp/efi/refind</tt> if you mounted your ESP as described in the previous step. Alternatively, you can use the Finder to create the directory.</li>
+<li>Type <b><tt>sudo mkdir -p /efi/refind</tt></b> to create a suitable directory for rEFInd. If you want to place rEFInd on the ESP or some other partition, you should adjust the pathname appropriately, as in <tt>/Volumes/esp/efi/refind</tt>. Alternatively, you can use the Finder to create the directory.</li>
<li>Copy the files in the <tt>refind</tt> subdirectory of the rEFInd binary package to the like-named directory you've just created. You can do this in the Finder or by typing <b><tt>sudo cp -r refind/* /efi/refind/</tt></b> in your Terminal window after changing into the rEFInd package's main directory.</li>
<p>When you reboot, your Mac should bring up the rEFInd menu, and should continue to do so thereafter. If you make changes that break this association, you can re-run the <tt>bless</tt> command (if necessary, restoring the rEFInd files first). This might be necessary after installing system updates from Apple or if you upgrade rEFInd to a newer version.</p>
-<p>If you're replacing rEFIt, you may discover that rEFInd works on the first boot, but the system reverts back to rEFIt or a direct boot to OS X on the second boot. To fix this problem, you can remove the rEFItBlesser program, which is located at <tt>/Library/StartupItems/rEFItBlesser</tt>. This program attempts to keep rEFIt set as the default boot loader, but it also has the purpose of protecting the computer from launching the wrong OS after waking from sleep. If you want that protection, my suggestion is to install rEFIt and rEFItBlesser and then replace the <tt>refit.efi</tt> file with <tt>refind_x64.efi</tt> or <tt>refind_ia32.efi</tt> (renaming it to <tt>refit.efi</tt>. Used in this way, rEFInd will still look for its own configuration file, <tt>refind.conf</tt>, so you'll need to move it but <i>not</i> rename it. If you don't move the icons from the rEFInd package, your icons will continue to look like rEFIt icons, and you'll be missing the new icons for specific Linux distributions that rEFInd provides.</p>
+<p>If you're replacing rEFIt, you may discover that rEFInd works on the first boot, but the system reverts back to rEFIt or a direct boot to OS X on the second boot. To fix this problem, you can remove the rEFItBlesser program, which is located at <tt>/Library/StartupItems/rEFItBlesser</tt>. This program attempts to keep rEFIt set as the default boot loader, but it also has the purpose of protecting the computer from launching the wrong OS after waking from sleep. If you want that protection, my suggestion is to install rEFIt and rEFItBlesser and then replace the <tt>refit.efi</tt> file with <tt>refind_x64.efi</tt> or <tt>refind_ia32.efi</tt> (renaming it to <tt>refit.efi</tt>. Used in this way, rEFInd will still look for its own configuration file, <tt>refind.conf</tt>, so you'll need to move it but <i>not</i> rename it. If you don't move the icons from the rEFInd package, your icons will continue to look like rEFIt icons, and you'll be missing the new icons for specific Linux distributions that rEFInd provides. One final caveat: It's conceivable that rEFItBlesser is what's causing filesystem corruption for some users, so if you've been having this problem with rEFIt, it might be worth disabling this program and not using it with rEFInd.</p>
<p>If you want to remove rEFInd from your system, you can delete its files. The Mac will revert to booting using whatever standard boot loader it can find. Alternatively, you can use <tt>bless</tt> to bless another EFI boot loader. The GUI Startup Disk utility in System Preferences provides a simplified interface that enables you to select which OS X installation to boot, but it doesn't look for non-Apple boot loaders, so you can't use it to enable rEFInd.</p>