]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - NEWS.txt
Added support for "%v" as a variable for the kernel version number in
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.10.5 (??/??/2017):
2 --------------------
3
4 - Two improvements to initrd detection for Linux kernels:
5 - If multiple initrd files match the kernel's version number, the file
6 with more matching characters after the version number is used, rather
7 than the first initrd file found.
8 - The "%v" string, if present in the refind_linux.conf file's second
9 field, will be replaced by the kernel version number. Thus, you can
10 specify options like:
11 "Boot with standard initrd" "ro root=/dev/sda2 initrd=initrd-%v-std"
12 "Boot with debug initrd" "ro root=/dev/sda2 initrd=initrd-%v-debug"
13 This enables using multiple initrd files per kernel, to be used for
14 different purposes.
15
16 - Minor code optimization.
17
18 - Add new key mappings: Backspace (Delete on Mac keyboards) works the same
19 as Esc, and Tab works the same as F2/Insert/+. This is done for the
20 benefit of new Apple laptops that lack physical Esc and function keys.
21
22 - Fix to refind-install to work better with disks other than /dev/sd? and
23 /dev/hd? devices.
24
25 - Fixes to touch/tablet support to improve reliability.
26
27 0.10.4 (10/9/2016):
28 -------------------
29
30 - Fixed compile problem for drivers with recent versions of GNU-EFI
31 (3.0.4, maybe 3.0.3).
32
33 - Fixed bug that could cause program crash on startup. (In practice, it
34 manifested with GNU-EFI starting with version 3.0.3 or 3.0.4.)
35
36 - An anonymous contributor has provided support for touch screens. This
37 support requires that the "enable_touch" token be used in refind.conf.
38 Note, however, that not all tablet computers have EFIs that provide the
39 necessary support in the firmware.
40
41 - Martin Whitaker contributed 64-bit support to the ext4fs driver, which
42 makes it compatible with ext4fs as written by some recent Linux
43 distributions.
44
45 - Tweaked refind-install to do a better job of detecting disks other
46 than /dev/sd? and /dev/hd? devices.
47
48 0.10.3 (4/24/2016):
49 -------------------
50
51 - Altered RPM & Debian installation scripts so as to NOT call sbsign if
52 Secure Boot is disabled. This is a response to Ubuntu bug #1574372
53 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sbsigntool/+bug/1574372): In
54 Ubuntu 16.04, the sbsign program is segfaulting randomly, which prevents
55 proper installation of the program. This change at least permits proper
56 installation IF Secure Boot is disabled.
57
58 - Changed description of BIOS/CSM/legacy OS loaders on Macs to include the
59 string "(Legacy)", so as to more easily identify BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode OSes
60 in the rEFInd main menu.
61
62 - Added recognition of the fwupx64.efi file as a firmware update tool.
63 This filename is excluded from the first-row launchers, and is instead
64 presented on the second row, controlled by the "fwupdate" item on the
65 "showtools" option line. It's enabled by default. Note that it's still a
66 bit unclear to me how this tool is supposed to be used. rEFInd launches it
67 with no options, but if it should take options, this will have to be
68 changed in the future.
69
70 - Tightened exclusion of shell binary filenames from boot loader scan.
71 Previously, any filename containing the substring "shell" was excluded
72 from scans. Now it's tighter; only files matching one of the filenames in
73 the constant SHELL_NAMES in main.c are excluded. This change will enable
74 programs with names that include "shell", but that aren't in rEFInd's
75 SHELL_NAMES list, such as "shelly.efi", to be shown in the rEFInd main
76 menu.
77
78 - Fixed bug in NTFS driver that caused it to hang (and thus hang the
79 computer) in some situations, particularly when a file on an NTFS volume
80 had many fragments and when the computer's CSM was activated. (Fix
81 courtesy of "S L.")
82
83 - Modified SIP/CSR rotation code: If the csr-active-config EFI variable is
84 missing AND the firmware is Apple (as identified by the string "Apple"
85 being present in the ST->FirmwareVendor string), rEFInd treats the
86 computer as one on which SIP is available and set to the "enabled" state
87 (0x10). The upshot is that the SIP/CSR tool will appear if the showtools
88 and csr_values options are set appropriately in refind.conf, even if the
89 csr-active-config variable is missing from the NVRAM. The point of this
90 change is that I've received reports of some Macs that run OS X 10.11 but
91 that lack this variable. OS X acts as if SIP were enabled, but rEFInd is
92 then unable to disable SIP. This change gives rEFInd the ability to
93 disable SIP on such systems. The drawback is that the variable might be
94 set on some systems that don't run OS X 10.11. This should be harmless
95 from a technical point of view, but the presence of SIP indicators in
96 rEFInd could be confusing.
97
98 - Added refind-mkdefault script to simplify resetting rEFInd as the default
99 boot program in Linux. The intent is to run this after GRUB, Windows, OS
100 X, or some other tool takes over as the primary boot manager. It can be
101 called from a startup script to handle this task automatically.
102
103 0.10.2 (1/26/2016):
104 -------------------
105
106 - Fixed bug in refind-install that caused mountesp to be installed as a FILE
107 called /usr/local/bin on OS X if the /usr/local/bin directory did not
108 already exist.
109
110 - Fixed bug in mvrefind that caused it to fail to move bootmgfw.efi in
111 some situations, and another that caused it to give the resulting NVRAM
112 entry the default rEFInd name of "rEFInd Boot Manager," rather than the
113 intended "Windows Boot Manager" (to work around bugs in some EFIs).
114
115 - Worked around bug/quirk in some EFIs (in HP ProBook 6470b laptop, at
116 least) that prevented EFI filesystem drivers from working. (Drivers would
117 load but not provide access to filesystems.)
118
119 - Fixed refind-install bug that caused --usedefault option to not work in OS
120 X. (This bug did not affect Linux.)
121
122 - Improved Secure Boot detection in refind-install in Linux.
123
124 - Fixed bug that caused custom volume badges (vol_*.png) to be read only
125 from default location ("icons" subdirectory), effectively eliminating the
126 ability to adjust them.
127
128 - Added centos.crt and centos.cer public key files.
129
130 0.10.1 (12/12/2015):
131 --------------------
132
133 - Change to PPA version: Installing the PPA now queries the user about
134 whether to install to the ESP. Upgrades will remember the initial
135 selection.
136
137 - Modified time-based sorting of loaders in a single directory to push
138 anything starting with "vmlinuz-0-rescue" to the end of the list. Fedora
139 gives its rescue kernels filenames that begin with that string, and if
140 such a kernel happens to be the most recent, treating it normally will
141 cause it to become the default when kernel folding is in use. This is
142 almost certainly undesirable, so this change keeps the rescue kernel at
143 the end of the list instead, which is saner.
144
145 - Significantly reworked the project's Makefiles. This should have no
146 impact on ordinary users, and even most developers should barely notice
147 it; but it should make future extensions to additional platforms or
148 building in different environments easier.
149
150 - Added workaround to gptsync for issue with some Macs' EFIs that caused
151 the program to skip through all prompts, thus accepting the default
152 option. This would normally cause gptsync to do nothing.
153
154 - Added type code 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage,
155 gdisk type AF05) to list of partition types recognized by gptsync.
156
157 - Removed Luxi Sans Mono font, since I discovered it was not open source;
158 and changed the default font from Nimbus Mono to Liberation Mono.
159
160 - Added support for compiling rEFInd for ARM64 (aka AARCH64 or aa64). This
161 works with both GNU-EFI and Tianocore UDK2014.SP1.P1. This support is
162 currently poorly tested. In particular, I used QEMU on an x86-64 computer
163 to create a virtualized ARM64 environment; I've not yet tested on a real
164 computer. I couldn't get QEMU to create a video card, so I used a serial
165 terminal, which means that the graphics features are untested -- I ran
166 rEFInd with "textonly" uncommented in refind.conf. I've tested the ext4fs
167 driver but no other drivers, although they all compile. (So does gptsync,
168 although it's unlikely to be useful on ARM64.) Some rEFInd features are
169 meaningless on ARM64, such as BIOS-mode boot support, anything geared
170 toward Macs (csr_values/csr_rotate, spoof_osx_version, etc.), and
171 enable_and_lock_vmx.
172
173 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan EFI boot loaders on
174 removable media when rEFInd itself was launched from the fallback
175 filename.
176
177 - Moved detailed descriptions of refind-install from installing.html to
178 a refind-install man page. To keep this information Web-accessible, I've
179 also created HTML versions of the three man pages and linked them into
180 the HTML documentation.
181
182 - Updated LodePNG to latest version (20151024).
183
184 - Fixed bugs in mkrlconf and in refind-install that could cause some kernel
185 options to be excluded from refind_linux.conf. There were two trouble
186 conditions:
187 - Previously, these scripts assumed that the first option in
188 /proc/cmdline was the kernel's filename, but this isn't always the
189 case. (In particular, when gummiboot launches the kernel, this is not
190 true. It might be an incorrect assumption in some other cases, too.)
191 The fix involves checking for likely signs of a kernel filename before
192 discarding this first option.
193 - These scripts cut the "initrd=*" option from /proc/cmdline, but the
194 call to "sed" was overzealous and cut until the end of input. This
195 usually worked, since the initrd= option was usually last on the line;
196 but if it wasn't, any options following initrd= would be lost.
197
198 - Added "kernel*" as a matching pattern for Linux kernels, since this is
199 what Gentoo uses by default.
200
201 - The refind-install script can now be run as a symbolic link in Linux.
202 This enables creating a /usr/sbin/refind-install link in Linux packages,
203 with the binaries stashed wherever the package system likes them. This
204 feature does NOT work in OS X, but there's relatively little need for it
205 there.
206
207 0.10.0 (11/8/2015):
208 -------------------
209
210 - Fixed bug that caused refind-install to not unmount the ESP when it
211 should under OS X.
212
213 - Modified refind-install and mkrlconf scripts to use /proc/cmdline as
214 source for default boot options EXCEPT when refind-install receives the
215 --root option. In that case, refind-install continues to use
216 /etc/default/grub as the source of default options. The idea behind this
217 change is that it's more reliable to get boot options from /proc/cmdline
218 when the targeted system is the one that's booted; but --root would be
219 used from emergency disks or live CDs, in which case the current boot
220 options would be completely wrong, so extracting boot options from GRUB
221 files is the best bet for getting close to the right options.
222
223 - Added "@/boot" to default also_scan_dirs setting. This makes kernels
224 show up on Btrfs volumes under Ubuntu (and perhaps others), at least when
225 the Btrfs driver is loaded.
226
227 - Added new System Integrity Protection (SIP) rotation feature for Macs
228 running OS X 10.11 or later. This feature is disabled by default, except
229 on CD-R and USB flash drive images, on which it's enabled. To enable it,
230 you must make TWO changes to refind.conf: Uncomment the new "csr_values"
231 item and add "csr_rotate" to the "showtools" line (uncommenting it, too,
232 if it's commented out). If desired, you can set more values on
233 "csr_values"; these are comma-delimited one-byte hexadecimal values that
234 define various SIP states. When SIP/CSR rotation is activated, a new
235 shield icon appears among the tools. Selecting it causes the next defined
236 value to be set and a confirmation message to appear for three seconds.
237
238 - Added display of current System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode to
239 "About" display.
240
241 - Added mountesp script for OS X to (you guessed it!) mount the ESP.
242
243 - Renamed support scripts: install.sh to refind-install, mvrefind.sh to
244 mvrefind, and mkrlconf.sh to mkrlconf.
245
246 - New icons! The old ones were getting to be a jumbled mess of styles,
247 particularly for OS tags. I used the AwOken icon set
248 (http://alecive.deviantart.com/art/AwOken-163570862) for the core icons,
249 then expanded from there by creating my own icons and modifying icons for
250 Debian and Elementary OS. I'm also trying to keep better track of
251 copyrights and licenses on icons. Between that and some icons being for
252 OSes that probably see very little use (FreeDOS and eComstation, for
253 instance), a few OS icons have been lost. If you prefer the old icons,
254 you can continue to use them by upgrading rEFInd, renaming icons-backup
255 to something else (say, icons-classic), and then adding an "icons" line
256 in refind.conf to point to the old icons directory.
257
258 - Changed from .zip to .tar.gz as source code archive format. I did this
259 because Linux is the only officially-supported build platform, and
260 tarballs are a more natural fit to a Linux environment. I'm leaving .zip,
261 .deb, and .rpm files as the formats for binary packages.
262
263 - Added detection of System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless") mode
264 to OS X portion of install.sh script. When detected, and if no existing
265 rEFInd installation is found, the script now prints a warning and brief
266 instructions of how to enter the Recovery mode to install rEFInd and
267 suggests aborting the installation. (The user can override and attempt
268 installation anyhow.) If SIP is detected along with an existing rEFInd
269 installation, the script moderates the warning and explains that an
270 update of a working rEFInd will probably succeed, but that re-installing
271 to fix a broken rEFInd will probably fail.
272
273 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
274 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
275 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
276 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
277 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
278 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
279 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
280
281 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
282 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
283 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
284 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
285 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
286 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
287 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
288 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
289 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
290 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
291 workaround.)
292
293 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
294 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
295 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
296 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
297 boot.
298
299 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
300 ------------------
301
302 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
303 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
304 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
305 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
306 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
307 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
308 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
309 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
310 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
311 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
312 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
313
314 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
315 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
316 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
317 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
318 Secure Boot db list.
319
320 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
321 ------------------
322
323 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
324 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
325 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
326 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
327 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
328 or "ro" option to the kernel.
329 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
330 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
331 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
332 system has more than one with the correct type code.
333
334 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
335 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
336 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
337 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
338 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
339 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
340 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
341 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
342 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
343
344 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
345 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
346 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
347 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
348
349 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
350
351 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
352 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
353 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
354 closely-related distributions.
355
356 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
357 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
358 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
359 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
360 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
361 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
362 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
363 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
364 potentially buggy system calls.
365
366 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
367 ------------------
368
369 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
370
371 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
372 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
373 EDK2.)
374
375 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
376 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
377 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
378 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
379 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
380 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
381 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
382 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
383
384 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
385 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
386 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
387 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
388 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
389 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
390 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
391 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
392 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
393
394 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
395 file was encountered.
396
397 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
398 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
399 under OS X.
400
401 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
402 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
403 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
404
405 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
406 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
407 IA32.
408
409 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
410 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
411 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
412 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
413 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
414 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
415
416 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
417 -----------------
418
419 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
420 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
421 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
422
423 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
424
425 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
426 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
427 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
428
429 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
430 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
431
432 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
433 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
434 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
435 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
436 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
437 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
438
439 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
440 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
441 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
442 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
443 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
444
445 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
446 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
447 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
448 such as the ASUS T100.)
449
450 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
451 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
452 of the efitools package.
453
454 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
455
456 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
457
458 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
459 itself.
460
461 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
462 -----------------
463
464 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
465 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
466 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
467
468 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
469 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
470 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
471 used universally.
472
473 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
474 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
475 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
476 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
477
478 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
479 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
480 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
481
482 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
483 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
484
485 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
486 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
487
488 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
489 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
490 selection images to fail to load.
491
492 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
493 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
494
495 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
496 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
497
498
499 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
500 -----------------
501
502 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
503
504 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
505
506 - Changes to
507
508 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
509
510 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
511 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
512 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
513 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
514 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
515 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
516 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
517 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
518
519 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
520
521 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
522 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
523 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
524 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
525 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
526
527 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
528 from other than the first hard disk.
529
530
531 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
532 ------------------
533
534 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
535 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
536 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
537
538 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
539
540 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
541 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
542 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
543 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
544
545 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
546 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
547 mode.
548
549 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
550 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
551 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
552 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
553
554 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
555 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
556 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
557
558 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
559 building and basic use instructions).
560
561 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
562 -----------------
563
564 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
565 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
566 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
567 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
568 is displayed.
569
570 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
571 distribution.
572
573 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
574 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
575 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
576
577 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
578 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
579 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
580 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
581 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
582 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
583 change its license to a BSD license.
584
585 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
586 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
587 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
588
589 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
590 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
591 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
592 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
593 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
594 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
595 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
596 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
597 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
598 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
599 and ensure it's set to "false".
600
601 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
602 -------------------
603
604 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
605 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
606
607 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
608 -----------------
609
610 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
611 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
612 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
613 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
614 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
615 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
616 loader in the
617 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
618 variable under Linux.
619
620 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
621
622 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
623 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
624
625 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
626 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
627
628 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
629 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
630 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
631 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
632 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
633 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
634 override a setting in the main file).
635
636 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
637 ------------------
638
639 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
640 on the root directory of a partition.
641
642 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
643 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
644
645 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
646 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
647 second.
648
649 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
650 screens.
651
652 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
653 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
654 firmware).
655
656 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
657 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
658 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
659 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
660 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
661 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
662 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
663 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
664
665 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
666 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
667 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
668 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
669 volume and is used by OS X.
670
671 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
672 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
673
674 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
675 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
676
677 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
678 -----------------
679
680 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
681 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
682 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
683 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
684 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
685
686 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
687
688 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
689 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
690 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
691 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
692
693 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
694 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
695 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
696 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
697 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
698 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
699
700 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
701 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
702 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
703
704 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
705 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
706
707 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
708 ------------------
709
710 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
711 some Macs.
712
713 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
714 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
715 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
716
717 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
718 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
719
720 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
721
722 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
723 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
724 drivers.
725
726 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
727 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
728 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
729
730 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
731 utility."
732
733
734 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
735 -----------------
736
737 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
738 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
739 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
740 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
741 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
742 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
743 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
744
745 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
746 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
747 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
748 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
749 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
750 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
751 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
752 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
753
754 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
755 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
756 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
757 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
758 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
759 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
760
761 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
762 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
763 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
764 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
765 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
766
767 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
768 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
769 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
770 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
771 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
772 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
773 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
774 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
775 problems might arise.
776
777 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
778 -----------------
779
780 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
781 dont_scan_files.
782
783 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
784
785 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
786 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
787 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
788 utility on the second row of icons.
789
790 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
791 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
792 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
793 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
794 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
795
796 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
797 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
798 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
799
800 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
801 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
802 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
803 UUID.
804
805 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
806 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
807
808 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
809 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
810 under some circumstances.
811
812 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
813 -------------------
814
815 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
816 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
817 default_selection "fred,ginger"
818 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
819 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
820
821 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
822 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
823 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
824 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
825 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
826 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
827 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
828 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
829 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
830 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
831 depending on your computer.
832
833 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
834 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
835 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
836 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
837 screensaver will be disabled.
838
839 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
840 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
841 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
842 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
843 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
844
845 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
846 -------------------
847
848 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
849 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
850
851 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
852 versions of OS X to fail.
853
854 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
855 drivers were present.
856
857 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
858 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
859 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
860 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
861 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
862 black a second or so later.
863
864 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
865 --------------------
866
867 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
868 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
869 problem.
870
871 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
872 ------------------
873
874 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
875 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
876 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
877
878 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
879 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
880 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
881 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
882 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
883 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
884 default.
885
886 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
887 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
888 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
889 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
890
891 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
892 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
893 known case, but there may be others.)
894
895 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
896 -----------------
897
898 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
899 loaders on Macs.
900
901 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
902
903 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
904 -----------------
905
906 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
907 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
908
909 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
910 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
911
912 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
913 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
914
915 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
916 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
917 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
918 HashTool-signed.efi".
919
920 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
921
922 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
923 was broken.
924
925 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
926 was broken.
927
928 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
929 -----------------
930
931 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
932
933 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
934 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
935 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
936
937 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
938 volume specification, if present.
939
940 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
941
942 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
943 ------------------
944
945 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
946 type for volumes that lack labels.
947
948 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
949 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
950 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
951 though.
952
953 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
954 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
955 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
956 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
957 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
958 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
959 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
960 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
961
962 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
963 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
964 non-EFI loaders, etc.
965
966 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
967 code.
968
969 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
970 -------------------
971
972 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
973 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
974
975 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
976 script.
977
978 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
979 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
980 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
981 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
982
983 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
984 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
985 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
986 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
987
988 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
989 -------------------
990
991 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
992 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
993 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
994 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
995
996 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
997
998 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
999 directory names that contain spaces.
1000
1001 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
1002 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
1003 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
1004 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
1005 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
1006
1007 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
1008 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
1009
1010 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
1011 Utility" in menu.
1012
1013 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
1014 partitions to fill the MBR.
1015
1016 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
1017 ------------------
1018
1019 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
1020 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
1021 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
1022 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
1023
1024 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
1025 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
1026 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
1027 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
1028 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
1029
1030 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
1031 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
1032 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
1033 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
1034 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
1035 is quietly ignored.
1036
1037 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
1038 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
1039
1040 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
1041 encountered when saving a screen shot.
1042
1043 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
1044 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
1045 sequence number, starting with "001".
1046
1047 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
1048 ------------------
1049
1050 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
1051 Kemperman.
1052
1053 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
1054 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
1055
1056 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
1057 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
1058 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
1059
1060 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
1061 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
1062 accidentally trash their systems.
1063
1064 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
1065 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
1066 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
1067
1068 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
1069 ------------------
1070
1071 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
1072 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
1073
1074 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
1075 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
1076
1077 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
1078 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
1079
1080 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
1081
1082 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
1083 -----------------
1084
1085 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
1086 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
1087
1088 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
1089 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
1090 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
1091 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
1092
1093 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
1094 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
1095
1096 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
1097 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1098
1099 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
1100 also_scan_dirs list.
1101
1102 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
1103
1104 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
1105 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
1106 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
1107
1108 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
1109 ------------------
1110
1111 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1112 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
1113 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
1114 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
1115 loader under the fallback name.
1116
1117 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
1118 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
1119 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
1120 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
1121 of 96 glyphs.
1122
1123 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
1124 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
1125
1126 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
1127 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
1128
1129 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
1130 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
1131 commented out or empty.
1132
1133 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
1134 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
1135
1136 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
1137 manual boot stanzas.
1138
1139 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
1140 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
1141
1142 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
1143 ------------------
1144
1145 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
1146 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
1147
1148 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
1149
1150 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
1151
1152 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
1153 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
1154
1155 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
1156
1157 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
1158 sized to cover these areas.
1159
1160 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
1161 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
1162 resolution!
1163
1164 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
1165 -----------------
1166
1167 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
1168 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
1169 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
1170 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
1171
1172 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
1173 startup on some systems.
1174
1175 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
1176 -----------------
1177
1178 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
1179 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
1180
1181 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
1182 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
1183
1184 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
1185 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
1186 burned to USB flash disks.
1187
1188 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
1189 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
1190 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
1191
1192 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1193 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
1194 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
1195 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
1196 from that installation.
1197
1198 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
1199 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
1200 than in EFI/refind.
1201
1202 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
1203 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
1204
1205 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
1206 -------------------
1207
1208 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
1209 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
1210 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
1211
1212 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
1213 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
1214 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
1215 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
1216 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
1217
1218 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
1219 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
1220 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
1221 Linux with the "make" command.
1222
1223 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
1224 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
1225
1226 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
1227 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
1228 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
1229 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
1230 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
1231 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
1232 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
1233 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
1234
1235 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
1236 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
1237 default.)
1238
1239 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
1240 -------------------
1241
1242 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
1243 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
1244 use on emergency discs.
1245
1246 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
1247 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
1248 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
1249 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
1250 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
1251 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
1252 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
1253 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
1254 handle.
1255
1256 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
1257
1258 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
1259 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
1260 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
1261 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
1262 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
1263 os_GENTOO.icns.
1264
1265 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
1266 mode.
1267
1268 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1269 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1270 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1271 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1272
1273 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1274 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1275 a boot loader launch failed.
1276
1277 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
1278 -------------------
1279
1280 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1281 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1282 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1283 options.
1284
1285 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1286 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1287 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1288 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1289
1290 - Added ext4fs driver!
1291
1292 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1293
1294 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1295
1296 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1297 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1298
1299 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1300 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1301 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1302 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1303 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1304 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1305 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1306 mode.
1307
1308 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1309 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1310 display even in graphics mode.
1311
1312 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1313 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1314
1315 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1316 disables the boot options editor.
1317
1318 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1319 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1320
1321 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1322 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1323 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1324
1325 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1326 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1327
1328 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1329 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1330 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1331 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1332 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1333 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1334
1335 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1336 on Linux systems.
1337
1338 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1339 ---------------------
1340
1341 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1342
1343 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1344 -------------------
1345
1346 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1347 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1348 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1349 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1350
1351 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1352 configuration file from a primary one.
1353
1354 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1355 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1356 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1357 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1358 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1359 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1360 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1361 LVM.)
1362
1363 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1364 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1365
1366 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1367 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1368 refind.conf.
1369
1370 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1371 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1372
1373 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1374 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1375 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1376
1377 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1378 ------------------
1379
1380 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1381 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1382 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1383 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1384 option:
1385 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1386
1387 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1388 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1389 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1390 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1391 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1392 for them makes sense.
1393
1394 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1395 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1396 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1397 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1398
1399 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1400 were not actually edited.
1401
1402 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1403 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1404 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1405 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1406 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1407
1408 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1409 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1410 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1411 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1412 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1413 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1414 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1415 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1416
1417 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1418 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1419 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1420
1421 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1422 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1423 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1424
1425 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1426 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1427 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1428 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1429
1430 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1431 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1432 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1433
1434 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1435 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1436
1437 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1438 ------------------
1439
1440 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1441
1442 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1443 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1444 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1445
1446 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1447 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1448 told isn't working as planned).
1449
1450 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1451 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1452 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1453 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1454
1455 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1456 ------------------
1457
1458 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1459
1460 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1461 for disks.
1462
1463 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1464 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1465 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1466 done this for two reasons:
1467 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1468 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1469 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1470 default for them should help them.
1471 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1472 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1473 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1474 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1475 default configurations.
1476
1477 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1478
1479 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1480 ------------------
1481
1482 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1483
1484 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1485
1486 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1487 ------------------
1488
1489 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1490 32-bit systems.
1491
1492 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1493 on 32-bit systems.
1494
1495 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1496 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1497 loaders/OSes.
1498
1499 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1500
1501 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1502 ------------------
1503
1504 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1505 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1506
1507 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1508 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1509 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1510 graphics or text mode itself.)
1511
1512 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1513 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1514 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1515 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1516 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1517 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1518 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1519
1520 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1521
1522 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1523 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1524 "linux.conf" themselves.
1525
1526 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1527 -----------------
1528
1529 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1530 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1531 via rEFInd.
1532
1533 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1534 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1535 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1536 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1537 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1538 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1539 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1540 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1541 the boot order).
1542
1543 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1544 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1545
1546 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1547 ------------------
1548
1549 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1550 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1551 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1552 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1553 system hasn't hung.
1554
1555 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1556 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1557
1558 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1559
1560 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1561 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1562 label.)
1563
1564 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1565 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1566
1567 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1568 ------------------
1569
1570 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1571 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1572 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1573 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1574 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1575 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1576 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1577
1578 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1579 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1580 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1581
1582 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1583 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1584 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1585 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1586
1587 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1588 file when launched from rEFInd.
1589
1590 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1591 ------------------
1592
1593 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1594 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1595
1596 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1597 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1598 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1599 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1600 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1601 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1602
1603 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1604 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1605
1606 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1607 -----------------
1608
1609 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1610 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1611 sample configuration file for a full description.
1612
1613 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1614 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1615 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1616 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1617 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1618
1619 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1620 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1621 target).
1622
1623 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1624 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1625
1626 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1627 -----------------
1628
1629 - Improved menu navigation:
1630 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1631 down arrows move between rows.
1632 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1633 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1634 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1635 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1636
1637 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1638 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1639 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1640
1641 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1642 -----------------
1643
1644 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1645 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1646 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1647 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1648 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1649 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1650 will fail to work.
1651
1652 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1653 mode.
1654
1655 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1656
1657 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1658 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1659 options.
1660
1661
1662 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1663 ------------------
1664
1665 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1666 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1667
1668 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1669 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1670 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1671 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1672 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1673 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1674 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1675 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1676 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1677 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1678 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1679
1680 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1681 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1682 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1683 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1684 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1685
1686 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1687 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1688
1689 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1690 ------------------
1691
1692 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1693 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1694 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1695 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1696 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1697 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1698
1699 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1700 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1701 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1702 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1703 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1704 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1705 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1706 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1707 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1708 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1709 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1710 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1711 that resets the video mode.
1712
1713 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1714 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1715 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1716 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1717 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1718 details.
1719
1720 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1721 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1722 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1723 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1724 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1725 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1726
1727 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1728 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1729 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1730
1731 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1732 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1733 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1734 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1735
1736 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1737 ------------------
1738
1739 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1740 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1741 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1742 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1743 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1744 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1745 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1746 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1747 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1748 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1749 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1750 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1751 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1752 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1753 installation.
1754
1755 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1756
1757 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1758 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1759 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1760 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1761 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1762 directories you like.
1763
1764 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1765 ------------------
1766
1767 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1768 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1769 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1770 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1771 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1772 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1773 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1774 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1775
1776 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1777 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1778 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1779
1780 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1781 -----------------
1782
1783 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1784 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1785
1786 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1787 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1788 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1789 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1790 documented the name....
1791
1792 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1793 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1794 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1795
1796 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1797 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1798 directory) on certain systems.
1799
1800 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1801 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1802
1803 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1804 -----------------
1805
1806 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1807 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1808 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1809 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1810 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1811 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1812 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1813 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1814 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1815 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1816 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1817 to me.
1818
1819 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1820 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1821 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1822 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1823 simultaneously.)
1824
1825 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1826 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1827
1828 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1829 image.
1830
1831 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1832 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1833 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1834 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1835 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1836
1837 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1838 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1839 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1840 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1841 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1842 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1843
1844 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1845 ------------------
1846
1847 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1848 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1849 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1850 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1851 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1852 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1853 small sample of computers.
1854
1855 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1856 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1857 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1858 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1859 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1860
1861 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1862
1863 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1864 ------------------
1865
1866 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1867 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1868 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1869 versionless initrd file.
1870
1871 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1872 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1873 continues.
1874
1875 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1876 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1877 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1878
1879 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1880 ------------------
1881
1882 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1883 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1884 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1885 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1886
1887 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1888 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1889 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1890 directory as the kernel.
1891
1892 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1893 entries in refind.conf file.
1894
1895 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1896 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1897
1898
1899 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1900 ------------------
1901
1902 - Initial public release