MacOS – Recovery HD tries to delete itself

You should be able to use dd to destroy the partition's header. You can then format (erase) it and run the install.

From the installer run Terminal and type the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0s2 bs=1024 count=1024

Do be warned, this will irrecoverably destroy all data on that partition. But it looks like that's what you're expecting. Make sure you don't accidentally target the wrong thing.

Also note that I haven't done this, exactly. I've used this technique to destroy the entire partition table, not just a single partition. But I think it should work.

When you're done quit Terminal and run Disk Utility. You won't get any complaints about Core Storage.

This answer applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10). If you are using El Capitan (OS X 10.11), then you would be better of installing rEFInd in a EFI partition.

In your example, the command would be as shown below.

./install.sh  --alldrivers  --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s5.

I assume disk0s5 has been formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I don't think I would use a 17.1 GB partition. The rEFInd partition on my Mac is 134 MB in size.

If you need to write to disk0s5 while booted to Ubuntu, you may have to disable journaling. This usually happens when you need to modify refind.conf.

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.

1. Highlight the partition.
2. Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
3. From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
4. Release the "alt/option" key.
5. You may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility to see the change.

To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application.