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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  18 5/9/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.4</p>
  19
  20 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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  85
  86 <hr />
  87
  88 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
  89
  90 <hr />
  91
  92 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>beta-quality software!</i> I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every few days. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
  93
  94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  95
  96 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:</p>
  97
  98 <ul>
  99
 100 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.4/refind-src-0.3.4.zip/download">A
 101     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
 102     compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 103     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
 104     tools. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to
 105     that toolchain is theoretically possible, but I've not attempted
 106     it.</li>
 107
 108 <li><b><a
 109     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.4/refind-bin-0.3.4.zip/download">A
 110     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 111     rEFInd on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64 computer and have no need to
 112     test rEFInd first by booting it on an optical disc. This zip file
 113     package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32) and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka
 114     <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd. Which you install
 115     depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
 116     href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 117
 118 <li><b><a
 119     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.4/refind-cd-0.3.4.zip/download">A
 120     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 121     the zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd without
 122     installing it first. (It boots on UEFI PCs, but fails on some older
 123     Macs.) If you like it, you can then copy the files from the CD-R to
 124     your hard disk. The files are named in such a way that the disc should
 125     boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64) or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI
 126     computers. Note that there's a bug that causes rEFInd to complain about
 127     invalid parameters while scanning various directories. You can safely
 128     ignore this message, but you'll need to press a key to dismiss it. I've
 129     included an open source EFI shell program on this disc that's not
 130     included in the binary zip file, so that you can access an EFI shell
 131     from a bootable disc even if you don't have an EFI shell available from
 132     your regular hard disk. This can be an extremely valuable diagnostic
 133     tool if you know about about using an EFI shell.</li>
 134
 135 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 136     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 137     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 138     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 139     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 140     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 141     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 142
 143 </ul>
 144
 145 <p>If you're using another platform, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
 146
 147 <p>To extract the files from the zip file images I've provided, you'll need a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
 148
 149 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
 150
 151 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 152
 153 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57632">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57966">git (experimental)</a> releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.</p>
 154
 155 <p>You can also obtain rEFInd from the <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages collection,</a> which creates packages for a number of OSes using its own packaging system.</p>
 156
 157 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
 158
 159 <hr />
 160
 161 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 162
 163 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
 164
 165 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
 166
 167 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 168
 169 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 170
 171   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 172 </body>
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