Windows – Cannot boot Ubuntu on a triple boot system (Catalina, Win10, and Ubuntu 18.4.4)

bootefiunixwindows

I am running a 2012 Macbook Air (5,2) with a 1TB SSD installed. I plan on using Mac as my main OS, windows for apps unavailable on mac, and linux for programming. Using the Mac Boot Manager (hold alt while booting up) allows me to boot Windows and Mac with no problem. But when I choose EFI boot to run Ubuntu, it then loads Grub. Choosing Ubuntu in Grub then gets stuck in emergency mode. I have installed rEFInd, but when I choose ubuntu it switches to Grub and rEFInd no longer comes up on startup. I have listed my disk partitions below:

% diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         450.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Transfer                50.0 GB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         250.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:                 Linux Swap                         6.0 GB     disk0s5
   6:           Linux Filesystem                         244.0 GB   disk0s6

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +450.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     168.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 41.5 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                523.5 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            11.1 GB    disk1s5

How would I go about booting Ubuntu?

Update:

After reading the comments, I tried to create a second EFI partition. In disk utility I added a 200MB partition out of the APFS partition. Disk Utility said that the process was successful, but now my APFS will not mount.

    /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               449.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Boot                    200.6 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Transfer                50.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data                         250.0 GB   disk0s5
   6:                 Linux Swap                         6.0 GB     disk0s6
   7:           Linux Filesystem                         244.0 GB   disk0s7

At this point, I just don't know what to do 🙁

Best Answer

With respect to your model/year Mac, the boot files for Windows and Ubuntu are installed to a FAT32 formatted volume stored in the EFI partition. Both operation systems store some of their boot files in the EFI/Boot folder. This causes a conflict which can result in either or both operation systems not appearing in or not booting from the Mac Startup Manager.

One possible solution would be to have two EFI partitions. It does not really matter when you create the second EFI partition. However, the second EFI has to exist by step 4 below. Here I will assume the second EFI partition exists at the end the drive (disk0s7).

Install macOS.
Install Windows. Windows will put its boot files in the first EFI partition (disk0s1).
Install Ubuntu. Ubuntu will put its boot files in the first EFI partition (disk0s1). Some of the Windows boot files will be overwritten.
Add the Windows boot files to the second EFI partition. The steps are given below.

Boot from the Windows installation flash drive. Enter shift+F10 to open a Command Prompt window. Enter the following commands. Here I assume windows is installed to drive C: and partition 7 contains the second EFI volume. If not, then make the appropriate substitutions.
```
diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 7
assign letter=s
list volume
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /s s:
exit
```

Related Solutions

MacOS – Uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 on Yosemite

Note: El Capitan (OS X 10.11) prevents users from selecting rEFInd and common Linux distributions from the Startup Disk pane. The new preferred method is to install rEFInd into the an EFI partition. My answer, to an unrelated question, outlines this new preferred method to start the rEFInd Boot Manager and Linux operating systems. The answer, given below, applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10) and possibly earlier versions of OS X.

Personally, I installed rEFInd on my computer to its own partition. This prevents the problems you are encountering. Everything ./install.sh installed went to this partition. If I want to remove rEFInd, I can simply erase or remove the partition. Of course both are unnecessary, because I can turn rEFInd on and off at will. I just go to the Startup window in System Preferences select my boot partition. This computer has OS X, Windows, Fedora and rEFInd installed.

I also can select the boot partition under Windows by using BootCamp and by holding the Option key down at startup. The command diskutil list produces:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Marlin                  300.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Coelacanth              98.9 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Linux HFS+ ESP          209.7 MB   disk0s5
   6: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4               524.3 MB   disk0s6
   7:                  Linux LVM                         98.6 GB    disk0s7
   8:                  Apple_HFS rEFInd                  939.5 MB   disk0s8

Note, the rEFInd partition is ~ 1 GB in size. In fact, it can be as small as 100 MB. When I setup this computer, I used the Disk Utility application to create the rEFInd partition. If I would have used the gpt command, I could have created a smaller partition. Neither OS X, Windows, Fedora nor rEFInd use the EFI partition to boot the computer. In fact, there is nothing useful in the EFI partition.

Answer to your questions:

How do I uninstall rEFInd 0.8-3.7 using OS X 10.10.3? Read the ./install.sh file and undo whatever it did. I should of had you run the commands bless --info and bless --info --getBoot. These would have told where the .efi file was stored. Note: Almost everyone installs rEFInd to the OS X boot partition.

How would I go and reinstall it using different options if I cannot remove it? The author of the software never said rEFInd could not be removed. I suggested you just install it again to its own partition. This might be a good place to mention the gpt command has to be run while either booted to an external recover partition or while booted to internet recovery.

Could I simply remove the EFI partition or would that corrupt my Mac? Do not remove the EFI partition! It is not used to boot OS X, but it is used by OS X for other things.

MacOS – Install rEFInd on another partition

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.

Highlight the partition.
Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
Release the "alt/option" key.
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.