Unable to boot :(

Hi all,

Getting desperate here, need some help
i hope this is the right forum for this

background:
I have a late 2012 imac, running OS X 10.10
Also i had Xubuntu & OpenSuse running as secondary OSs

I was using refind & everything was rosy.
Recently i updated opensuse 13.1 to 13.2 through a live USB.
This basically zapped my refind & goes directly to GRUB2 bootloader.

Now GRUB shows me options (and advanced options) for Xubuntu & opensuse 13.1 only
Though 13.2 was installed as an upgrade, it doesn't show up.
13.1 doesn't boot either even after choosing it in GRUB.
Xubuntu loads without problems.

Now the issues am having:

The Magic keyboard doesn't seem to be 'active' during the boot process, so pressing the 'option' key does not do anything.

I also think that GRUB is not recognising any other bootable USBs either.

How do i go about restoring OS X or refind?
Refind website says it's recommended to install refind via OSX if running on a mac as installing via Linux will corrupt the partitions...further

is there any alternate to pressing 'option' during boot?
(i have a normal USB keyboard connected)

Refind website says it's recommended to install refind via OSX if running on a mac as installing via Linux will corrupt the partitions...further

is there any alternate to pressing 'option' during boot?
(i have a normal USB keyboard connected)

Click to expand...

It is beyond me why some folks have to mess with various distros of Linux on a perfectly good Mac that's running OS X which is many times superior to any distro of Linux. Sorry for the rant... but we've seen this so many times.

First try to reset the PRAM to see if that allows you to boot back into Yosemite. If that's successful you can attempt to reinstall reFind or reFit and get back your dual boot menu.

chscag said:

It is beyond me why some folks have to mess with various distros of Linux on a perfectly good Mac that's running OS X which is many times superior to any distro of Linux. Sorry for the rant... but we've seen this so many times.

First try to reset the PRAM to see if that allows you to boot back into Yosemite. If that's successful you can attempt to reinstall reFind or reFit and get back your dual boot menu.

Click to expand...

haha.. i hear you.
i needed to use Linux for a stable Android development environment.
I found it quite tough to get all the dependencies working as needed in OS X
Add to that a very small base of developers who work natively in OS X

Anyhow, i was able to solve this situation.
The simplest solutions evade at times.

In case someone else runs into this, what i did-
In the grub menu i was trying to see if i could do something in the command line interface
Just typed exit & immediately i was popped back onto refind.
Immediately booted into OS X & reinstalled refind..

The current isue has been sorted, but i do want to get rid of grub entirely & just do refind do it's thing.

Thank you for your time @chscag

Well, glad to hear you're back up and running. Sometimes the simple solutions work best. I've had so many "bouts" with Grub over the years that I've become Grub shy. ;D