My goal is to have rEFInd manage the boot process for my iMac with two internal drives installed.
On one drive I have OS X 10.8.5 and on the other I have Fedora 20. NO partitions are encrypted. When I installed Fedora I made sure all of the non-swap partitions were ext4. I did NOT install the default boot loader (GRUB2). I then installed rEFInd into the ESP on the OS X disk with --alldrivers.
The iMac boots, rEFInd comes up, I have OS X and two Fedora icons show up (one is an emergency version), selecting the OS X option works fine, selecting any of the Fedora options ends up generating a fatal error and dumps me into a dracut prompt that I have zero experience with.
Analysis of the displayed messages reveals a whole lot of things that look like minor errors, but just two bits of red text. One is keyboard related, so I'm ignoring that. The other is more ominous: "FATAL: No or empty root= argument. Refusing to continue". I'd say that there is my problem.
I get the feeling that if I can only somehow get a refind_linux.conf file into the /boot partition on the Fedora disk (which would contain a root=... argument) then I'd be getting closer to a successful boot. The problem is that, in order to generate that file, I need to run mkrlconf.sh from within Fedora itself — which of course I can't boot into because I don't have the refind_linux.conf file.
The Catch-22 is starting to melt my brain, so I was hoping someone could cast some fresh eyes over what I've done so far and point out the obvious mistake that I have made.
Cheers!
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If you know where your root (/) filesystem is, you can do a one-time boot by hitting F2 or Insert twice, then entering the requisite root= option among the existing options. Fedora should then boot, and you can either create a /boot/refind_linux.conf file manually or run the mkrlconf.sh script that comes with rEFInd to create one for you. By default, Fedora uses LVM, and I don't recall offhand what the default name of its root (/) logical volume is, so you may need to dig a bit or use an emergency disc to figure out what the right value is. If you deviated from the default and chose to not use LVM, you should be able to enter a partition device filename, as in root=/dev/sda5 (or whatever it is).
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
My goal is to have rEFInd manage the boot process for my iMac with two internal drives installed.
On one drive I have OS X 10.8.5 and on the other I have Fedora 20. NO partitions are encrypted. When I installed Fedora I made sure all of the non-swap partitions were ext4. I did NOT install the default boot loader (GRUB2). I then installed rEFInd into the ESP on the OS X disk with --alldrivers.
The iMac boots, rEFInd comes up, I have OS X and two Fedora icons show up (one is an emergency version), selecting the OS X option works fine, selecting any of the Fedora options ends up generating a fatal error and dumps me into a dracut prompt that I have zero experience with.
Analysis of the displayed messages reveals a whole lot of things that look like minor errors, but just two bits of red text. One is keyboard related, so I'm ignoring that. The other is more ominous: "FATAL: No or empty root= argument. Refusing to continue". I'd say that there is my problem.
My current understanding of Using the EFI Stub Loader: Three Configuration Options is that it is possible to boot Fedora from rEFInd without GRUB. I'm specifically going For Those With Foresight or Luck: The Easiest Method.
I get the feeling that if I can only somehow get a refind_linux.conf file into the /boot partition on the Fedora disk (which would contain a root=... argument) then I'd be getting closer to a successful boot. The problem is that, in order to generate that file, I need to run mkrlconf.sh from within Fedora itself — which of course I can't boot into because I don't have the refind_linux.conf file.
The Catch-22 is starting to melt my brain, so I was hoping someone could cast some fresh eyes over what I've done so far and point out the obvious mistake that I have made.
Cheers!
If you know where your root (
/) filesystem is, you can do a one-time boot by hitting F2 or Insert twice, then entering the requisiteroot=option among the existing options. Fedora should then boot, and you can either create a/boot/refind_linux.conffile manually or run themkrlconf.shscript that comes with rEFInd to create one for you. By default, Fedora uses LVM, and I don't recall offhand what the default name of its root (/) logical volume is, so you may need to dig a bit or use an emergency disc to figure out what the right value is. If you deviated from the default and chose to not use LVM, you should be able to enter a partition device filename, as inroot=/dev/sda5(or whatever it is).