Resolved Recovery Partition won't update

[crjackson2134]

I know there is a thread for this somewhere, but I can't find it.

After the last update (10.10.4) I noticed that my recovery partition is not updated. Does anyone know how to make the recovery partition update to 10.10.4? Hopefully without reinstalling...

 

[campyguy]

Had that issue here with the OTA update too. Installing the Combo installer DLed from Apple's Support/Downloads portal "fixed" that on the 3 Macs in my office that I installed the update on.

 

[crjackson2134]

okay, thanks

 

[crjackson2134]

I tried the combo update today. Update went fine, in fact I think it shaved a few seconds off the boot up time, but I could be wrong.

This did not fix the restore partition at all. It's still stuck on 10.10.3 and it's starting to get on my last nerve.

A few months back, I remember a post that gave instructions on how to recreate or install a full recovery partition (no internet downloading needed for restore). I can't find the darned post, but I would like to do that if possible for 10.10.4.

If that can't be done, I'd just like to get the normal recovery partition updated to 10.10.4

If anyone knows the magic to make this happen please let me know sooner rather than later. I don't want to wipe the whole drive and start from scratch just to fix the restore partition, but I'm starting to think that's what I have to do.

Any advice on how to update this thing is greatly appreciate.

Thanks.

 

[crjackson2134]

I finally found the post that had FixIt instructions here; Yosemite Recovery Update 1.0 bug. That fixed it, but I'd still like to find the post showing how to make the recovery partition a full installer instead of a downloader from the internet.

 

[campyguy]

A shame that your Mac's recovery partition wasn't updated - it was on 6 Macs in my office that I installed the Combo updater. I also keep a copy of a the OS installer and latest updater on at least one of my Macs and two backup drives - far faster than an internet install IMO, and I've had no need for Terminal scripts or that Lion hack for updates in several years. Cheers!

 

[crjackson2134]

A shame that your Mac's recovery partition wasn't updated - it was on 6 Macs in my office that I installed the Combo updater. I also keep a copy of a the OS installer and latest updater on at least one of my Macs and two backup drives - far faster than an internet install IMO, and I've had no need for Terminal scripts or that Lion hack for updates in several years. Cheers!

I have a many copies of every installer (including every point release / DP since ML). A recovery partition is needed for other aspects of the OS such as Find My Mac. I do have full USB installers too, but that's slow compared to my SSUBX SSD and just about any other SSD as well.

I'd like to have the full installer on the recovery partition, and that's doable, I just need to find the guide.

I suspect the recovery partition didn't get updated because I have multiple OS's a DB of 10.11 installed on other drives. It likely detected the higher version number and skipped updating, but I wanted it updated none the less. I'm sure it would update just fine on a plain vanilla machine, but that's not the case here. The terminal script isn't really a hack, it's just a different tool and a powerful one at that.

 

[tywebb13]

I finally found the post that had FixIt instructions here; Yosemite Recovery Update 1.0 bug. That fixed it

That's a pretty old thread and for a different purpose.

So here are updated instructions more relevant for just updating the recovery partition to a 10.10.4 version. It's almost the same, but more modernised for public releases instead of developer previews:

1. Download the Lion Recovery Update from https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1464?locale=en_US . (And before you ask, YES. I mean LION recovery update!) Make sure it is in your downloads folder. If you still happen to have the full yosemite installer somewhere, right click on the Install OS X Yosemite.app file and click Show Package Contents. Go to Contents/SharedSupport/. Copy the InstallESD.dmg file into your Downloads folder. If you don't still have the full installer, you can get it again by redownloading from your purchases tab in your mac app store.

2. Download and decompress the file recovery.sh.zip from http://4unitmaths.com/recovery.sh.zip and move recovery.sh into your Downloads folder if it's not there already.

3. Open Terminal and type the following commands:

chmod +x ~/Downloads/recovery.sh
sudo ~/Downloads/recovery.sh


4. Wait a few minutes for it to finish and return back to a prompt. Reboot with holding down the option key to test your recovery partition.

(Although if you have core storage you will have to revert it to make the recovery partition show up in the startup manager. Just run these in terminal to revert it if you want to:

diskutil cs list

and then

diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID

where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command. Then restart.)

 

[crjackson2134]

That's a pretty old thread and for a different purpose.

So here are updated instructions more relevant for just updating the recovery partition to a 10.10.4 version. It's almost the same, but more modernised for public releases instead of developer previews:

Yeah I know it was for the DP, but I adapted the method for 10.10.4 and it worked perfectly.

Thanks for the modernized version. I'm going to save this to PDF just in case I need it down the road.

 

[the bug]

Just bumping an old thread to say thanks to all involved here !
After updating to 10.10.5 via the AppStore , I noticed that my recovery partition did not update, it still showed as 10.10.4.
I'm on an unsupported 1,1 (with 5355's) flashed to a 2,1, with the pikeralpha boot.efi.

I re-downloaded the latest Yosemite full install from the AppStore, and the other files mentioned above, and was able to update my recovery partition to 10.10.5.
Of course I had to replace the boot.efi on the recovery partition with pike's boot.efi , but other than that this procedure still works flawlessly.

Thanks again all, this place is great !!

- Jay

 

[splifingate]

I finally found the post that had FixIt instructions here; Yosemite Recovery Update 1.0 bug. That fixed it, but I'd still like to find the post showing how to make the recovery partition a full installer instead of a downloader from the internet.

Edit the Recovery Partition without breaking it.

Works like a charm.

 

[FlyingJ]

(Although if you have core storage you will have to revert it to make the recovery partition show up in the startup manager. Just run these in terminal to revert it if you want to:

cs list

and then

diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID

where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command. Then restart.)

I recently performed a clean install of OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite via USB thumb drive using the createinstallmedia command as referenced on Apple's support page and numerous other forums and sites.

I was thinking the recovery partition wasn't installed because I couldn't see it as a boot option when holding down the option key. When in fact it was there because Command-R did boot to the recovery partition. All I did was run the terminal commands you listed above and ta da! It's there when I press option on boot.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

[Riwam]

I had lost my recovery partition and some nice person showed me your post.
A failed upgrade to 10.11 had forced me to copy back my 10.10 from a USB drive cloned with CCC.
Usually CCC indicates that the recovery partition should be cloned as well but in my case it didn't.

I had no idea how to get back the lost recovery partition until I was redirected to your post.

Thank you very much for your clear updated instructions.
Ed

 

[tywebb13]

It will be interesting to see if this procedure works to update El Capitan recovery partitions. I'm going to give this a try when 10.11.1 is publicly released.

 

[tywebb13]

I can now confirm that the method works for el capitan.

I was able to use it to update my 10.11 recovery partition to a 10.11.1 one.

So that's pretty cool.