Yosemite & Bootpicker

Note that Yosemite puts a Core Storage Logical Volume on to many computers during the installation. This may be to encourage the use of File Vault disk encryption, for Fusion Drives, or other possible future developments like ZFS. However, it means that you will need to backup the Windows partitions on an external disk and then re-install them after the primary OS is installed. There is a limit of two partitions on these volumes too. Also, after installation, the Recovery partition does not show in the System Preferences> Startup list and needs to be accessed by using Cmd+R at boot up.

I cannot find Bootpicker in Roaring Apps, so wonder at it's suitability for use in any case.

http://roaringapps.com/apps?index=b

Hi Ken

Yes having the same issue with BootPicker here after upgrading one Mac to Yosemite. I was using rEFIt before also but its been unsupported for a lot longer than BootPicker. Im just going to re-image the Mac partition with one of my Mavericks images and get BootPicker working again. I'd rather have a stable dual boot Mac than one with a new OS where some applications are not working on it...

If I launch BootPicker from Terminal under Yosemite like so:

/Applications/Utilities/BootPicker.app/Contents/MacOS/BootPicker

I get the following message:

"BootPicker: Exiting, BootPicker is only supported on Leopard or later."

My guess is that it is doing an OS X version parse and sees 10.10 as "10.1" or something like that. I will be working on this some to see if I can get it going - I'll post back here if I have any other news.

Dude... nice catch. Ok, so you are totally right. Bootpicker OS version check is getting confused with the Yosemite OS version. I'm assuming it is seeing it as version 10.1 instead of version 10.10... doh!

Here's what I did to confirm this (DO NOT TRY THE FOLLOWING ON A PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!!)

I basically tricked the Yosemite machine to report that it is a 10.9.x machine. To do this, I changed the values in this plist: /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. There are two very obvious entries to change. Once I changed those values, logged out, Bootpicker was up and running. The problem, NOTHING else runs. Since almost every app does version checking, all Yosemite apps see the machine as a 10.9.2 machine and no longer allow them to be launched. Again, DON'T TRY THIS ON A PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!

Ok, what this tells all of us? It's bootpicker's version checking. Now, can we modify the bootpicker app to not version check w/out the source code? That's the million dollar question. Back later with any updates. I happen to know the person who made this app. It's our good 'ol friend Mike Bombich. I'll see if I can reach out to him for some guidance.

rEFind http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ is a fork of rEFit and is fully OS X 10.10 compatible and is actively supported. We're very likely switching to it was the demise of Bootpicker.

Has there been any luck reaching out to the developer for a fix to this issue?

http://www.nbalonso.com/fixing-bootpicker-for-yosemite/

http://www.nbalonso.com/fixing-bootpicker-for-yosemite/. Click on (You can download my package) here.

It' a working Bootlicker.

Bootpicker