Mojave MacOS: Dual boot and refind boot manager

Question

I plan to dual boot my MacBook Pro 2018 (10.14.3) with ubuntu 18.04.02

Τhe relevant guides one can find by googling a bit suggest to have refind boot manager installed.

When I try to download and install it, I get:

./refind-install
Not running as root; attempting to elevate privileges via sudo....
ShimSource is none
Installing rEFInd on OS X....
Installing rEFInd to the partition mounted at /Volumes/ESP
Found rEFInd installation in /Volumes/ESP/EFI/refind; upgrading it.

**** ALERT: SIP ENABLED! ****

You are attempting to upgrade an existing installation, but it appears that
System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled. If rEFInd is working now, then
this is fine; you can upgrade your existing rEFInd. If rEFInd is not working,
though, re-installing from this boot will not help. To re-enable rEFInd, you
must re-install it from a Recovery system or from another OS. To enter the
Recovery system and re-install rEFInd:

  1. Reboot
  2. Hold down Command+R as the chime sounds
  3. When the OS has booted, select Utilities->Terminal
  4. Change to this directory with the 'cd' command; it will probably be under
     /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/pkaramol/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.2
  5. Re-run this script.

For more on this subject, see http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/sip.html

Do you want to attempt installation (Y/N)? N
Exiting!

1.: I assume this means refind is already installed, right?

2: Does this mean that by installing ubuntu on a separate partition (I have already created via the Disk Utility) will prompt me for OS selection on next reboot? (provided that ubuntu installation is successful).

Answer 1

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The direct answer: (1) If rEFInd wasn't installed, then don't assume it is, despite the message. (2) You'll only be prompted for OS selection if it's installed, and configured properly (timeout not set to -1).

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To Get rEFInd Working

1. Prepare all of the partitions and install the operating systems you want; confirm they work. Use the same EFI partition. Holding down option while booting should show your bootable partitions and drives - if this isn't working, installing read support for ext3 should help: OSXfuse and fuse-ext2.

2. If you don't have rEFInd already installed, disable SIP, install it, and re-enable SIP.

3. From there, there is a lot of flexibility with theming, choosing what options show up on the rEFInd screen, icons, etc. etc.

Anyways, at this point rEFInd should be your boot manager. You may have to deal with boot coups, however, in the future.

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I'd get all your OS installations running first. Although it doesn't really matter whether you install rEFInd first or get the OS'es set up on your partitions first, I've found this to be easier.

If you haven't used rEFInd before and are having trouble, stick with it, it's great. It's very customizable and has lots of features, so it has a bit of a learning curve - particularly with menu setup and theming.