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I had my Mac set up with rEFIt and installed Ubuntu 13.04, unfortunately GRUB was installed over rEFIt. I was not expecting this and have since found out that I have no idea where my installation disk is for OSX 10.8. I want to boot to OSX, but I cannot do boot repair using any OSX tools since I have lost the ability to boot to this. Any suggestions?

GRUB lists the Ubuntu options along with Mac OSX 32 and 64bit, neither of which work.

iamwpj
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5 Answers5

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Try holding down the Option key while powering on the computer. This should enable you to boot OS X, from which you can re-install rEFIt (or install rEFInd instead, if you care to upgrade, since rEFIt is no longer being maintained).

Rod Smith
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I actually figured this out. The easiest way in any situation where GRUB overwrites rEFIt is to hit C when the GRUB screen loads. This will bring up the grub command line. Typing exit here will exit GRUB and show you rEFIt. From here a boot into OSX will allow you to uninstall GRUB and install rEFInd.

iamwpj
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The following did the job for me (based on iamwpj's suggestion):

  • Reboot
  • In the Grub menu, press escape.
  • You get a command line. Type exit.
  • rEFIt/rEFInd will show up. Boot OS X.
  • Tell Startup Disk that you want to boot your OS X install by default.
  • Reboot. Your computer will automatically boot OS X. (Not sure if this step is necessary).
  • Reinstall rEFInd (or, if you insist, rEFIt) the usual way.
  • Next time you boot, you'll get rEFInd.
dremodaris
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I solved this for my friend with the same or a similar problem (Refind was over-ridden by Grub without me being consulted after installing Ubuntu).

I had a Mountain Lion USB stick made by dd-ing an ISO to a USB stick.

After pressing the on button I used the alt key on a USB PC keyboard, and a boot screen showed.

I went to the menu to reboot into the Mac mode, this bypasses the grub problem.

Once logged into the original OS X system, I reinstalled Refind by opening the Terminal and dragging the Refind install.sh file into the Terminal, hitting enter and entering the sudo password.

I rebooted and was greeted by Refind again :)

Luke Stanley
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You could probably also use efibootmgr or another EFI tool from Ubuntu to tell the UEFI to load rEFIt/rEFInd first. There is some documentation on the rEFInd pages about removing Grub to prevent re-occurrences of this issue (which I've run into myself).

dragon788
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