dual boot os/x 9.5 and Linux Mint .. fighting with Grub and boot order

[Richard Davenport]

I had an apple macbook with OSX 9.5 loaded. I partitioned, and installed Linux Mint. Somehow Grub is coming up when I boot. It offers Linux Mint / Linux Mint in debug mode / OSX 32 bit / OSX 64 bit. Only the Linux Mint's work. The OSX 64 gives me a blank screen. The OSX 32 gives me an error message about not 32 bit. If I chose the "C" option to drop into Grub console mode, and then exit out, I POP into rEFInd? Then I can choose either Linux Mint or OSX that works. I went into efibootmgr and changed the BootOrder to rEFInd / ubuntu (it has the two other Mac OS X choices, but, I did'nt put them into the order as they don't work from GRUB. How can I force Grub to exit into rEFInd or delete Grub? I did try the dpkg -P option, but, it gave me an error about "dependency problems prevent removal of grub-common: os-prober depends on grub-common" ?? Thank you

[Roderick W. Smith]

You could try the refind-mkdefault script, which comes with rEFInd and is intended to be run from Linux. (It will not work from macOS!) This script uses efibootmgr to change the boot order so that rEFInd will launch. It sounds like you've already tried this without success, so it's possible that refind-mkdefault will fail, too; but it's unclear from your description precisely what your configuration is and precisely what you tried, so it's also possible that refind-mkdefault will do something slightly different and succeed.

Beyond that, I'd suggest posting the output of sudo efibootmgr -v for examination, and report precisely what command(s) you tried that did not work.

Another option is to delete the GRUB files from your EFI System Partition (ESP). They're stored under /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu in Ubuntu; simply delete (or rename/move) that entire directory tree. Note that dpkg -P will not do this; and as you discovered, there are dependencies you'd need to deal with if you try deleting GRUB, too. The rEFInd documentation includes information on disabling or removing GRUB:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/bootcoup.html#disabling_grub

Note that, even if you delete GRUB now, APT may try to re-install it. The above documentation covers this issue and describes how to work around it.

Yet another thing you could try is to run refind-install from Ubuntu, or install a rEFInd Debian package (which will run refind-install). This should create a new rEFInd boot entry and make rEFInd the default. You might still encounter a boot coup when GRUB updates (or after a macOS update), but there'd be a better chance of refind-mkdefault working correctly after that happens.

[Richard Davenport]

I finally have it working .. I ripped out the new Linux Mint partition .. reinstalled Linux Mint, and it defaulted to Grub for the 'dual boot' option to keep OS/X .. but, OS/X again wouldn't load, and rEFInd wasn't installed, so I had no access to my OS/X. I ran install-refind from Linux Mint, and it told me to run a command (don't quote me on this, but, something like "get app refind") it flashed some messages and seemed to intall rEFInd .. I ran install-refind again, and it installed perfectly! .. I'm up and running (ok, I have a small issue with the WiFi .. but, that's expected .. and I'll have a little more work to deal with that. Thank you very much for your web page and help!!! Richard

[Richard Davenport]

correction ... make that I ran refind-install