I had the same issue since the beta and the official release did not solve this issue.
In the terminal I had the following output:
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 210.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 40.1 GB disk0s4
a recovery partition was available (but not working)
The following did fix my issue:
- downloaded the yosemite installer (again)
- created a bootable installation (8GB USB) drive with yosemite (USB drive volume name is Untitled).
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app --nointeraction
- Removing the not working recovery partition
diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ ErasedDisk /dev/disk0s3
- merging the free space with the Macintosh HD partition
diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ MacHD disk0s2 disk0s3
- Install (like you upgrade) Yosemite over your existing (Yosemite) installation and complete the installation procedure (I used the installer from the fresh created USB).
After the installation was completed I rebooted the machine and I was able to use the find my Mac option again (error related to the recovery partition was gone).
This worked for me, a small (typing) error might result in loosing your installation + data. Please be sure you have a good working backup before you start!
Used resource: removing-and-rebuilding-a-malfunctioning-recover-hd-partition/
1) Resize your OSX Partition, leave the space created as freespace (i.e don't create any partition)
2) Write the iso to USB and boot it (take the most recent image from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com)
3) Create ext4 for / where the freespace was created, use sda1 (osx: disk1s1) or use another EFI if you have more then 1 drive and you want to use the second for linux only - in short: use the EFI partition as the "bootloader" partition
4) Install Ubuntu (or any other distro) - but watch for the bootloader, if you don't want to use grub (care to elaborate, why?) you need to rebless the volume in os'x to boot through the normal bootscreen where you can hold ALT to fire linux.
I don't know what you want to achieve with that, since having grub is basically the same, and you will be loading grub from that screen anyways since you need to load the kernel somehow - guess there are other options but I never used them, just went with grub.
What I mean is that after you select the other partition with the normal bootscreen by holding ALT, you will load grub - since you must load the kernel, and there is now way to load it directly from that screen other then using MBR which even makes less sense since it's a UEFI system ;-)
note: I strongly advise you to use refit - it's a very good solution and has some extra functionality that will make multi-os setup's boot better.
If you don't like it, just rebless the volume in os x and you get rid of it.
bless
is a system command- however in the new os x there is:
sudo systemsetup -liststartupdisks
and to setup back any Volume as the sys volume use:
sudo systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/YOUR_SYS_VOLUME_NAME
to check if it worked:
sudo systemsetup -getstartupdisk
So even if something goes FUBAR with the bootloader, it won't be any problem.
Why would you reinstall os x or anything else to boot linux on a Mac?!? Anyone doing reinstallations to boot linux is just a windows impared user who does not know how unix works, what gpt is and thinks of EFI as fancy bios.
Best Answer
The modern mac os recovery environment automatically logs in as root. So the su or sudo command is not necessary since you are already using superuser privilages. Try the command
ls -lah
to see your permessions of the current directory. Orls -lah whoami
to see your user permissions.