MacOS – How to Rescue OS X without Visible Startup Disc

bootefimacospartitionrecovery

I need to delete refind but I cannot do it because I bypass it, since I cannot see visible startup disc.
I stopped partition process where I tried to erase Linux partition because of infinite time in the process.
There are no directories /etc/refind.d/ and /boot/efi/EFI/refind in my system. I am now in Recovery Mode where you cannot see the startup disk in Startup Disk.

The problem with refind is that it shows at startup just the Linux partition which is broken. If I click it, the thing goes to grub> where I already did this based on the thread

grub rescue > ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd1,msdos1)
grub rescue > ls (hd0,msdos1) # try to recognize which partition is this
grub rescue > ls (hd0,msdos2) # let's assume this is the linux partition
grub rescue > set root=(hd0,msdos2)
grub rescue > set prefix=(hd0,msdos2)/boot/grub # or wherever grub is installed
grub rescue > insmod normal # if this produced an error, reset root and prefix to something else ..
grub rescue > normal

where I selected the HSF+ disk for the boot. The problem is that this will not bypass refind.

How can rescue OS X without visible Startup disk and with refind?

Best Answer

My solution was to delete OS X because I did not get help enough fast. I needed my computer. Klanomath's proposal seems to be forward

Boot to Recovery Mode please
Do diskutil list
Do gpt -r show disk0 in Terminal.app
Add output/screenshot here

Related Solutions

MacOS – Apple recovery partition possibly creating problems in Ubuntu

OS X creates the recovery partition as an alternate boot solution for ease of reinstallation and troubleshooting.

It is not needed for normal operation, and as someone that's familiar with boot technology and options, the simplest option would be to simply delete the partition entirely and patch the partition table if needed.

Here is a stock layout:

Mac:~ me$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

You could merge partitions disk0s3 into the partition that precedes it (in this case) to effectively erase and then delete the Apple_Boot partition listed as Recovery HD. In this case, you would need to be booted to some other drive than disk0 to have both disk0s2 and disk0s3 unmountable (which would make them disk1 or higher in all likelihood).

 diskutil mergePartitions JHFS+ "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk0s3

Should that not work, you might have to image Macintosh HD to another drive as an img file (or straight partition to partition) and then repartition hdisk0 to have just one partition and restore.

As to the deeper question, my guess is that the "hiding" of the partition isn't compatible with other non Apple tools and is confusing the issue - hence the advice to just remove it and count on alternate options to restore your system or boot externally in stead of the recovery HD.

MacOS – Cannot boot to OS X using rEFInd

Edit this file:

/Volumes/rEFInd/System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf

Add the following text to the end of the above file.

scanfor manual,internal,hdbios,external,biosexternal,optical,cd
dont_scan_dirs /System/Library/CoreServices
menuentry "Mac OS X" {
    icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png
    volume "Macintosh HD"
    loader \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
    graphics on
}

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