Installing OSX El Capitan on a rEFInd-d Macbook Pro

[Paul D. Smith]

Hi all. I have a Macbook Pro 9,2 which was until today happily running Yosemite, and using rEFInd 0.10.3, and dual-booting Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS. I need to update to El Capitan because, in the few times I need to use OSX, I need a newer version of Xcode which Apple, in its infinite wisdom, won't allow you to install on an older version of OSX.

I downloaded the update using the normal OSX App Store and started the install, but when it rebooted I get a failure in the OSX Installer, saying "OS X could not be installed on your computer", with a reason that "A boot helper partition is required when working with Core Storage". It suggests that I "Quit the installer to restart your coputer and try again."

I do that, and it reboots into the installer again (does not offer rEFInd anymore so I can't boot Linux) and does the exact same thing. I've tried power cycling just to be sure, and I used Option at boot and selected the HD (I only get two options: the HD and the recovery partition).

I was able to reboot into OSX by using the "Select Disk..." under the Apple menu in the Installer app when I see the error to choose my hard disk, but it boots back into Yosemite.

I don't know if it would have helped me to uninstall rEFInd before I did the El Capitan install, or if there was something else wrong: on another board I saw something about OSX not being happy if there was not enough space between partitions...?!?! However I seem to have lost that message now.

Starting the terminal from the installer recovery and using "diskutil list" shows:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                         TYPE NAME                  SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:        GUID_partition_scheme                      +512.1 GB   disk0
   1:                          EFI EFI                   209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:            Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh SSD         254.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                   Apple_Boot Recovery HD           650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                    Apple_HFS Recovery HD           650.0 MB   disk0s4
   5:             Linux Filesystem                       80.0 GB    disk0s5
   6:                   Linux Swap                       2.0 GB     disk0s6
   7:             Linux Filesystem                       173.9 GB   disk0s7
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                         TYPE NAME                  SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                    Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD        +254.2 GB   disk1
                                                                   Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                                                   <UUID>
                                                                   Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                         TYPE NAME                  SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:        GUID_partition_scheme                      +7.2 GB     disk2
   1:                          EFI EFI                   209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                    Apple_HFS OS X Install ESD      6.9 GB     disk2s2
/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                         TYPE NAME                  SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:        GUID_partition_scheme                      +2.1 GB     disk3
   1:                    Apple_HFS OS X Base System      2.0 GB     disk3s1

Anyone have any thoughts on how to move forward?

[Paul D. Smith]

After getting back into Yosemite I removed rEFInd using the OSX uninstall instructions (I used mountesp and rm -rf refind from the /Volume/ESP/EFI directory), but trying to install El Capitan again gives me the same behavior as before where install fails.

[joevt]

Enable FileVault and then disable it in Yosemite before upgrading to El Capitan?

[Paul D. Smith]

Hi Joe; thanks for the note. I'm not sure I understand what you mean though: FileVault is not enabled on my system. I'm currently running Yosemite again. Are you suggesting I enable FileVault, then disable it again? Is there a reason why this might be a useful thing to do; is there some known issue with FileVault?

[joevt]

You're OS X partition is using Core Storage. I googled "Apple_CoreStorage". First link was this:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/213969/what-is-the-purpose-of-apple-corestorage-container-on-single-drive-macs

Why do you have two Recorvery HD's? One of them is used to boot the Apple_CoreStorage partition (probably the first one). One of them will have the GUID of the Apple_CoreStorage partition in one of the files. Use the following command to get that info.
~~~
diskutil info /dev/disk0s2
~~~

The second Recovery HD has type Apple_HFS but I think RecoveryHD is usually Apple_Boot even when not using Apple_CoreStorage.

You can examine them in Yosemite by enabling the debug feature of Disk Utility and display system partitions. Then mount the partition.

Sadly, the Disk Utility in El Capitan is garbage.

[Paul D. Smith]

Hi Joe; unfortunately your post has been awaiting moderation for a couple of days now so I haven't been able to read it. On Monday if no one has any other ideas I'll have to delete my Linux partitions and see if that will allow me to upgrade to El Capitan.

[Paul D. Smith]

I'm still not able to see Joe's post since it's still awaiting moderation, whatever that means. Lacking other direction I tried deleting the Linux partitions and retrying the El Capitan installation, but I got exactly the same behavior as above.

So now I'm completely stuck, unless I want to reformat the disk completely and install El Capitan from scratch, apparently.

Any other ideas welcome.

[Paul D. Smith]

Unfortunately that didn't work. Even after I deleted my Linux partitions I'm still getting this error trying to upgrade to El Capitan. I may have no option but to reload the system from scratch. Sigh.

Oops, I guess I already posted this :). Never mind!