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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 11/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.7</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
 101     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-src-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 102     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
 103     compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 104     href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
 105     Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binaries (below), although the
 106     <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
 107     development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
 108     toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
 109     possible, but I've not attempted it.</li>
 110
 111 <li><b><a
 112     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 113     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 114     rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
 115     computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
 116     optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
 117     and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
 118     Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
 119     href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 120
 121 <!--
 122 <li><b><a
 123     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 124     binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
 125     like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
 126     development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
 127     that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
 128     develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
 129     (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
 130     TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
 131     either build.)</li>
 132 -->
 133
 134 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 ESP, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1</tt> to install to the first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.</p>
 135
 136 <li><b><a
 137     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-cd-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 138     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 139     the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
 140     (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
 141     UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
 142     copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
 143     such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
 144     or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
 145     shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
 146     so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
 147     don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
 148     be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
 149     shell.</li>
 150
 151 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 152     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 153     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 154     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 155     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 156     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 157     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 158
 159 </ul>
 160
 161 <p>If you're using a platform other than <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64, 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>
 162
 163 <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>
 164
 165 <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>
 166
 167 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 168
 169 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/refind-efi/">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/refind-efi-tianocore-git/">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>
 170
 171 <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>
 172
 173 <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>
 174
 175 <hr />
 176
 177 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 178
 179 <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>
 180
 181 <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>
 182
 183 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 184
 185 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 186
 187   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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