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[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.9.3 (??/??/2015):
2 -------------------
3
4 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
5 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
6 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
7 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
8 boot.
9
10 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
11 ------------------
12
13 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
14 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
15 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
16 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
17 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
18 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
19 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
20 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
21 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
22 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
23 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
24
25 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
26 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
27 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
28 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
29 Secure Boot db list.
30
31 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
32 ------------------
33
34 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
35 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
36 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
37 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
38 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
39 or "ro" option to the kernel.
40 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
41 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
42 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
43 system has more than one with the correct type code.
44
45 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
46 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
47 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
48 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
49 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
50 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
51 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
52 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
53 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
54
55 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
56 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
57 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
58 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
59
60 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
61
62 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
63 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
64 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
65 closely-related distributions.
66
67 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
68 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
69 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
70 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
71 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
72 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
73 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
74 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
75 potentially buggy system calls.
76
77 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
78 ------------------
79
80 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
81
82 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
83 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
84 EDK2.)
85
86 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
87 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
88 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
89 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
90 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
91 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
92 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
93 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
94
95 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
96 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
97 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
98 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
99 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
100 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
101 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
102 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
103 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
104
105 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
106 file was encountered.
107
108 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
109 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
110 under OS X.
111
112 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
113 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
114 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
115
116 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
117 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
118 IA32.
119
120 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
121 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
122 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
123 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
124 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
125 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
126
127 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
128 -----------------
129
130 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
131 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
132 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
133
134 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
135
136 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
137 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
138 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
139
140 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
141 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
142
143 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
144 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
145 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
146 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
147 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
148 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
149
150 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
151 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
152 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
153 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
154 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
155
156 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
157 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
158 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
159 such as the ASUS T100.)
160
161 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
162 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
163 of the efitools package.
164
165 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
166
167 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
168
169 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
170 itself.
171
172 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
173 -----------------
174
175 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
176 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
177 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
178
179 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
180 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
181 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
182 used universally.
183
184 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
185 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
186 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
187 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
188
189 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
190 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
191 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
192
193 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
194 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
195
196 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
197 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
198
199 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
200 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
201 selection images to fail to load.
202
203 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
204 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
205
206 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
207 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
208
209
210 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
211 -----------------
212
213 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
214
215 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
216
217 - Changes to
218
219 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
220
221 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
222 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
223 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
224 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
225 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
226 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
227 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
228 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
229
230 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
231
232 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
233 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
234 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
235 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
236 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
237
238 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
239 from other than the first hard disk.
240
241
242 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
243 ------------------
244
245 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
246 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
247 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
248
249 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
250
251 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
252 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
253 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
254 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
255
256 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
257 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
258 mode.
259
260 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
261 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
262 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
263 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
264
265 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
266 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
267 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
268
269 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
270 building and basic use instructions).
271
272 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
273 -----------------
274
275 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
276 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
277 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
278 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
279 is displayed.
280
281 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
282 distribution.
283
284 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
285 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
286 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
287
288 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
289 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
290 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
291 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
292 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
293 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
294 change its license to a BSD license.
295
296 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
297 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
298 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
299
300 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
301 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
302 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
303 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
304 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
305 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
306 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
307 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
308 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
309 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
310 and ensure it's set to "false".
311
312 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
313 -------------------
314
315 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
316 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
317
318 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
319 -----------------
320
321 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
322 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
323 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
324 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
325 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
326 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
327 loader in the
328 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
329 variable under Linux.
330
331 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
332
333 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
334 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
335
336 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
337 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
338
339 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
340 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
341 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
342 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
343 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
344 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
345 override a setting in the main file).
346
347 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
348 ------------------
349
350 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
351 on the root directory of a partition.
352
353 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
354 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
355
356 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
357 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
358 second.
359
360 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
361 screens.
362
363 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
364 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
365 firmware).
366
367 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
368 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
369 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
370 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
371 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
372 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
373 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
374 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
375
376 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
377 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
378 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
379 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
380 volume and is used by OS X.
381
382 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
383 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
384
385 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
386 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
387
388 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
389 -----------------
390
391 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
392 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
393 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
394 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
395 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
396
397 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
398
399 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
400 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
401 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
402 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
403
404 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
405 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
406 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
407 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
408 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
409 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
410
411 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
412 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
413 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
414
415 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
416 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
417
418 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
419 ------------------
420
421 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
422 some Macs.
423
424 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
425 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
426 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
427
428 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
429 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
430
431 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
432
433 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
434 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
435 drivers.
436
437 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
438 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
439 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
440
441 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
442 utility."
443
444
445 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
446 -----------------
447
448 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
449 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
450 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
451 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
452 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
453 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
454 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
455
456 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
457 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
458 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
459 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
460 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
461 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
462 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
463 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
464
465 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
466 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
467 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
468 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
469 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
470 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
471
472 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
473 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
474 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
475 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
476 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
477
478 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
479 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
480 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
481 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
482 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
483 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
484 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
485 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
486 problems might arise.
487
488 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
489 -----------------
490
491 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
492 dont_scan_files.
493
494 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
495
496 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
497 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
498 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
499 utility on the second row of icons.
500
501 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
502 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
503 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
504 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
505 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
506
507 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
508 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
509 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
510
511 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
512 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
513 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
514 UUID.
515
516 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
517 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
518
519 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
520 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
521 under some circumstances.
522
523 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
524 -------------------
525
526 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
527 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
528 default_selection "fred,ginger"
529 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
530 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
531
532 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
533 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
534 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
535 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
536 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
537 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
538 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
539 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
540 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
541 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
542 depending on your computer.
543
544 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
545 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
546 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
547 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
548 screensaver will be disabled.
549
550 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
551 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
552 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
553 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
554 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
555
556 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
557 -------------------
558
559 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
560 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
561
562 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
563 versions of OS X to fail.
564
565 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
566 drivers were present.
567
568 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
569 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
570 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
571 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
572 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
573 black a second or so later.
574
575 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
576 --------------------
577
578 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
579 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
580 problem.
581
582 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
583 ------------------
584
585 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
586 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
587 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
588
589 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
590 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
591 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
592 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
593 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
594 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
595 default.
596
597 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
598 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
599 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
600 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
601
602 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
603 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
604 known case, but there may be others.)
605
606 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
607 -----------------
608
609 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
610 loaders on Macs.
611
612 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
613
614 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
615 -----------------
616
617 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
618 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
619
620 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
621 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
622
623 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
624 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
625
626 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
627 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
628 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
629 HashTool-signed.efi".
630
631 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
632
633 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
634 was broken.
635
636 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
637 was broken.
638
639 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
640 -----------------
641
642 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
643
644 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
645 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
646 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
647
648 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
649 volume specification, if present.
650
651 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
652
653 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
654 ------------------
655
656 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
657 type for volumes that lack labels.
658
659 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
660 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
661 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
662 though.
663
664 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
665 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
666 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
667 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
668 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
669 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
670 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
671 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
672
673 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
674 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
675 non-EFI loaders, etc.
676
677 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
678 code.
679
680 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
681 -------------------
682
683 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
684 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
685
686 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
687 script.
688
689 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
690 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
691 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
692 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
693
694 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
695 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
696 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
697 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
698
699 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
700 -------------------
701
702 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
703 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
704 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
705 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
706
707 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
708
709 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
710 directory names that contain spaces.
711
712 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
713 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
714 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
715 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
716 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
717
718 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
719 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
720
721 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
722 Utility" in menu.
723
724 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
725 partitions to fill the MBR.
726
727 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
728 ------------------
729
730 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
731 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
732 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
733 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
734
735 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
736 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
737 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
738 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
739 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
740
741 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
742 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
743 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
744 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
745 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
746 is quietly ignored.
747
748 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
749 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
750
751 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
752 encountered when saving a screen shot.
753
754 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
755 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
756 sequence number, starting with "001".
757
758 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
759 ------------------
760
761 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
762 Kemperman.
763
764 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
765 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
766
767 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
768 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
769 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
770
771 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
772 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
773 accidentally trash their systems.
774
775 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
776 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
777 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
778
779 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
780 ------------------
781
782 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
783 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
784
785 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
786 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
787
788 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
789 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
790
791 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
792
793 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
794 -----------------
795
796 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
797 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
798
799 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
800 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
801 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
802 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
803
804 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
805 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
806
807 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
808 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
809
810 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
811 also_scan_dirs list.
812
813 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
814
815 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
816 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
817 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
818
819 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
820 ------------------
821
822 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
823 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
824 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
825 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
826 loader under the fallback name.
827
828 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
829 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
830 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
831 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
832 of 96 glyphs.
833
834 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
835 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
836
837 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
838 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
839
840 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
841 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
842 commented out or empty.
843
844 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
845 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
846
847 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
848 manual boot stanzas.
849
850 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
851 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
852
853 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
854 ------------------
855
856 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
857 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
858
859 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
860
861 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
862
863 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
864 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
865
866 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
867
868 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
869 sized to cover these areas.
870
871 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
872 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
873 resolution!
874
875 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
876 -----------------
877
878 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
879 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
880 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
881 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
882
883 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
884 startup on some systems.
885
886 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
887 -----------------
888
889 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
890 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
891
892 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
893 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
894
895 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
896 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
897 burned to USB flash disks.
898
899 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
900 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
901 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
902
903 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
904 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
905 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
906 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
907 from that installation.
908
909 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
910 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
911 than in EFI/refind.
912
913 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
914 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
915
916 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
917 -------------------
918
919 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
920 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
921 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
922
923 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
924 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
925 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
926 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
927 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
928
929 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
930 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
931 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
932 Linux with the "make" command.
933
934 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
935 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
936
937 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
938 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
939 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
940 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
941 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
942 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
943 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
944 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
945
946 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
947 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
948 default.)
949
950 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
951 -------------------
952
953 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
954 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
955 use on emergency discs.
956
957 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
958 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
959 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
960 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
961 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
962 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
963 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
964 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
965 handle.
966
967 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
968
969 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
970 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
971 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
972 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
973 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
974 os_GENTOO.icns.
975
976 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
977 mode.
978
979 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
980 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
981 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
982 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
983
984 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
985 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
986 a boot loader launch failed.
987
988 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
989 -------------------
990
991 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
992 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
993 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
994 options.
995
996 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
997 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
998 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
999 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1000
1001 - Added ext4fs driver!
1002
1003 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1004
1005 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1006
1007 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1008 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1009
1010 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1011 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1012 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1013 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1014 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1015 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1016 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1017 mode.
1018
1019 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1020 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1021 display even in graphics mode.
1022
1023 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1024 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1025
1026 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1027 disables the boot options editor.
1028
1029 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1030 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1031
1032 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1033 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1034 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1035
1036 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1037 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1038
1039 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1040 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1041 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1042 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1043 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1044 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1045
1046 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1047 on Linux systems.
1048
1049 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1050 ---------------------
1051
1052 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1053
1054 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1055 -------------------
1056
1057 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1058 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1059 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1060 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1061
1062 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1063 configuration file from a primary one.
1064
1065 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1066 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1067 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1068 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1069 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1070 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1071 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1072 LVM.)
1073
1074 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1075 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1076
1077 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1078 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1079 refind.conf.
1080
1081 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1082 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1083
1084 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1085 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1086 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1087
1088 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1089 ------------------
1090
1091 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1092 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1093 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1094 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1095 option:
1096 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1097
1098 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1099 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1100 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1101 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1102 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1103 for them makes sense.
1104
1105 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1106 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1107 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1108 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1109
1110 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1111 were not actually edited.
1112
1113 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1114 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1115 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1116 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1117 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1118
1119 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1120 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1121 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1122 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1123 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1124 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1125 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1126 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1127
1128 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1129 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1130 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1131
1132 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1133 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1134 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1135
1136 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1137 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1138 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1139 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1140
1141 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1142 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1143 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1144
1145 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1146 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1147
1148 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1149 ------------------
1150
1151 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1152
1153 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1154 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1155 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1156
1157 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1158 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1159 told isn't working as planned).
1160
1161 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1162 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1163 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1164 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1165
1166 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1167 ------------------
1168
1169 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1170
1171 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1172 for disks.
1173
1174 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1175 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1176 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1177 done this for two reasons:
1178 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1179 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1180 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1181 default for them should help them.
1182 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1183 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1184 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1185 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1186 default configurations.
1187
1188 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1189
1190 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1191 ------------------
1192
1193 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1194
1195 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1196
1197 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1198 ------------------
1199
1200 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1201 32-bit systems.
1202
1203 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1204 on 32-bit systems.
1205
1206 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1207 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1208 loaders/OSes.
1209
1210 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1211
1212 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1213 ------------------
1214
1215 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1216 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1217
1218 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1219 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1220 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1221 graphics or text mode itself.)
1222
1223 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1224 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1225 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1226 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1227 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1228 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1229 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1230
1231 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1232
1233 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1234 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1235 "linux.conf" themselves.
1236
1237 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1238 -----------------
1239
1240 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1241 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1242 via rEFInd.
1243
1244 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1245 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1246 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1247 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1248 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1249 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1250 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1251 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1252 the boot order).
1253
1254 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1255 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1256
1257 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1258 ------------------
1259
1260 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1261 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1262 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1263 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1264 system hasn't hung.
1265
1266 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1267 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1268
1269 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1270
1271 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1272 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1273 label.)
1274
1275 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1276 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1277
1278 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1279 ------------------
1280
1281 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1282 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1283 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1284 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1285 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1286 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1287 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1288
1289 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1290 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1291 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1292
1293 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1294 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1295 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1296 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1297
1298 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1299 file when launched from rEFInd.
1300
1301 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1302 ------------------
1303
1304 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1305 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1306
1307 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1308 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1309 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1310 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1311 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1312 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1313
1314 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1315 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1316
1317 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1318 -----------------
1319
1320 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1321 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1322 sample configuration file for a full description.
1323
1324 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1325 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1326 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1327 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1328 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1329
1330 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1331 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1332 target).
1333
1334 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1335 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1336
1337 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1338 -----------------
1339
1340 - Improved menu navigation:
1341 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1342 down arrows move between rows.
1343 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1344 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1345 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1346 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1347
1348 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1349 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1350 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1351
1352 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1353 -----------------
1354
1355 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1356 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1357 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1358 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1359 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1360 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1361 will fail to work.
1362
1363 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1364 mode.
1365
1366 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1367
1368 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1369 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1370 options.
1371
1372
1373 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1374 ------------------
1375
1376 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1377 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1378
1379 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1380 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1381 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1382 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1383 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1384 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1385 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1386 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1387 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1388 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1389 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1390
1391 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1392 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1393 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1394 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1395 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1396
1397 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1398 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1399
1400 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1401 ------------------
1402
1403 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1404 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1405 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1406 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1407 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1408 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1409
1410 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1411 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1412 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1413 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1414 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1415 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1416 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1417 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1418 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1419 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1420 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1421 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1422 that resets the video mode.
1423
1424 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1425 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1426 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1427 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1428 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1429 details.
1430
1431 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1432 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1433 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1434 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1435 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1436 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1437
1438 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1439 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1440 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1441
1442 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1443 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1444 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1445 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1446
1447 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1448 ------------------
1449
1450 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1451 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1452 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1453 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1454 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1455 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1456 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1457 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1458 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1459 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1460 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1461 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1462 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1463 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1464 installation.
1465
1466 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1467
1468 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1469 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1470 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1471 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1472 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1473 directories you like.
1474
1475 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1476 ------------------
1477
1478 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1479 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1480 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1481 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1482 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1483 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1484 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1485 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1486
1487 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1488 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1489 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1490
1491 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1492 -----------------
1493
1494 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1495 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1496
1497 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1498 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1499 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1500 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1501 documented the name....
1502
1503 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1504 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1505 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1506
1507 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1508 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1509 directory) on certain systems.
1510
1511 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1512 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1513
1514 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1515 -----------------
1516
1517 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1518 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1519 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1520 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1521 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1522 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1523 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1524 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1525 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1526 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1527 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1528 to me.
1529
1530 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1531 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1532 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1533 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1534 simultaneously.)
1535
1536 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1537 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1538
1539 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1540 image.
1541
1542 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1543 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1544 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1545 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1546 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1547
1548 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1549 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1550 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1551 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1552 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1553 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1554
1555 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1556 ------------------
1557
1558 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1559 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1560 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1561 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1562 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1563 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1564 small sample of computers.
1565
1566 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1567 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1568 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1569 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1570 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1571
1572 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1573
1574 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1575 ------------------
1576
1577 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1578 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1579 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1580 versionless initrd file.
1581
1582 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1583 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1584 continues.
1585
1586 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1587 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1588 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1589
1590 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1591 ------------------
1592
1593 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1594 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1595 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1596 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1597
1598 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1599 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1600 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1601 directory as the kernel.
1602
1603 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1604 entries in refind.conf file.
1605
1606 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1607 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1608
1609
1610 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1611 ------------------
1612
1613 - Initial public release