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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: rEFInd Features</title>
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  14   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />rEFInd Features</h1>
  15
  16 <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  17 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  18
  19 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  20 11/8/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.10.0</p>
  21
  22 <p>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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 102 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 103 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
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 110
 111 <td>
 112 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
 113 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
 114 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
 115 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 116 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 117 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 118 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 119 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
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 124 </table>
 125
 126 <hr />
 127
 128 <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>
 129
 130 <hr />
 131
 132 <p>rEFInd is a fork of the <a href="http://refit.sourceforge.net">rEFIt</a> boot manager. As such, it has many features in common with rEFIt. These include the following:</p>
 133
 134 <ul>
 135
 136 <li>Support for both text-mode and graphical operation.</li>
 137
 138 <li>Auto-detection of EFI and BIOS boot loaders.</li>
 139
 140 <li>User-configurable graphics and icons&mdash;you can set your own background, set new icons, and so on.</li>
 141
 142 <li>Launch EFI boot loaders.</li>
 143
 144 <li>Launch legacy (BIOS) boot loaders on Macs. (rEFInd also supports legacy boots on some UEFI PCs; see below.)</li>
 145
 146 <li>Launch options for an external EFI shell or disk partitioner. (See the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> section for information on how to obtain and install these components.)</li>
 147
 148 <li>Provide the <tt>gptsync</tt> utility for creating hybrid MBRs. Note that rEFInd's version of <tt>gptsync</tt> is significantly updated compared to rEFIt's. Also, this tool should be used only on Macs that dual-boot with a BIOS-based OS, such as Windows; or <i>very</i> rarely on other computers.</li>
 149
 150 <li>Set OS-specific boot options, such as to launch Mac OS X with verbose text-mode debug messages.</li>
 151
 152 <li>Load EFI drivers for filesystems or hardware devices not supported natively by your firmware. (This feature is absent in some builds of rEFIt and in rEFInd prior to version 0.2.7.)</li>
 153
 154 <li>Inclusion of drivers for the Linux ReiserFS and ext2 filesystems in the
 155     main package. (These drivers are absent from rEFInd prior to version
 156     0.4.0. See below concerning drivers for additional filesystems.)</li>
 157
 158 </ul>
 159
 160 <p>rEFInd expands on rEFIt by providing features that improve on or go beyond those of rEFIt, such as:</p>
 161
 162 <ul>
 163
 164 <li>Bug fixes, focusing on those that have bothered me personally.</li>
 165
 166 <li>The ability to specify a configuration file to use at program launch
 167     time via the <tt>-c <tt class="variable">filename</tt></tt>
 168     command-line option.</li>
 169
 170 <li>User-configurable methods of detecting boot loaders:
 171
 172     <ul>
 173     <li>Auto-detection of EFI boot loaders, independently on internal hard disks, external hard disks, optical discs, and network boot loaders.</li>
 174     <li>Auto-detection of legacy BIOS boot loaders, independently on internal hard disks, external hard disks, and optical discs.</li>
 175     <li>Manually via the configuration file</li>
 176     </ul>
 177
 178     You can select which of these methods to use to construct the rEFInd main boot menu. Although rEFIt supports auto-detection, it does not support manual configuration; and rEFIt's options to enable, disable, and prioritize individual boot loader detection methods are primitive compared to those in rEFInd.</li>
 179
 180 <li>Beginning with rEFInd 0.8.4, <i>experimental</i> network boot loader support via the <a href="http://ipxe.org">iPXE</a> EFI binaries. When activated, rEFInd should add a network-boot option to its menu when a suitable network boot server is available.</li>
 181
 182 <li>Support for launching legacy BIOS boot loaders on UEFI PCs with
 183 suitable CSM support (as of version 0.4.6, with significant improvements in
 184 version 0.8.0). Note that some UEFI PCs,
 185 such as those with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI, lack a usable CSM.</li>
 186
 187 <li>Improved flexibility in setting the default OS to boot. rEFInd enables specifying the default by any substring in the description. You can also specify multiple defaults, so that if the first isn't available, another will take its place (which is useful when using removable disks). You can also add time specifications to set a default to be used only during certain hours of the day. If no default loader is set, rEFInd defaults to the last-booted loader.</li>
 188
 189 <li>Support for partition names or GUID values as fallbacks for filesystem labels in certain configuration file settings. Partition names may be shown as values to be displayed as part of the descriptive text for boot tags on the main menu, too, if a filesystem has no label.</li>
 190
 191 <li>The ability to fine-tune options passed to EFI boot loaders, via manual configuration.</li>
 192
 193 <li>An option editor to enable you to edit the options passed to an EFI boot loader on a per-boot basis.</li>
 194
 195 <li>The ability to specify additional directories to scan for boot loaders and drivers (as of version 0.2.7).</li>
 196
 197 <li>The ability to specify volumes and directories to <i>not</i> be scanned for boot loaders, even if they would ordinarily be scanned (as of version 0.6.0 for volumes and 0.4.2 for directories).</li>
 198
 199 <li>The ability to re-scan boot loaders, to assist when changing removable media or after making a change to the configuration file with an EFI shell (as of version 0.3.5).</li>
 200
 201 <li>A configurable delay before scanning for boot loaders, for systems on which there's a delay before disks become available (as of version 0.4.6).</li>
 202
 203 <li>The ability to specify an additional icon storage directory, to assist in efforts to customize rEFInd's appearance (as of version 0.3.4).</li>
 204
 205 <li>Support for icons, selection backgrounds, and banner graphics in PNG format, in addition to the ICNS and BMP formats supported by rEFIt.</li>
 206
 207 <li>Support for full-screen banner images.</li>
 208
 209 <li>Support for scaling icons, to adjust icon size for users with high-resolution displays, poor eyesight, or simply for personal preference reasons.</li>
 210
 211 <li>The ability to set the screen's graphics resolution, within limits imposed by the EFI (as of rEFInd 0.3.0). Similarly, as of version 0.6.0, you can specify the text-mode resolution.</li>
 212
 213 <li>Proper handling of more OS options than can fit on the screen. (rEFIt displays an empty list in graphical mode when it detects too many OSes.)</li>
 214
 215 <li>Additional OS icons (most of which are Linux distributions, at least so far). This can make it easier to find a specific distribution in the boot list if you've installed multiple Linux distributions.</li>
 216
 217 <li>Beginning with version 0.6.6, support for loading user-defined fonts, in the form of PNG files containing ASCII characters 32 through 126 plus a glyph to be used for values outside that range.</li>
 218
 219 <li>The ability to auto-detect Linux initial RAM disk files and to read Linux kernel options from a <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file. These features support (nearly) automatic handling of Linux kernels with embedded EFI stub loader support (a new feature with Linux 3.3.0).</li>
 220
 221 <li>The ability to "fold" multiple Linux kernels into a single entry in the main menu. Additional kernels appear as options in the submenu. This feature is enabled by default, but can be disabled by setting <tt>fold_linux_kernels false</tt> in <tt>refind.conf</tt>.</li>
 222
 223 <li>In the absence of a <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file, the ability to pass minimal Linux boot options to a kernel based on the contents of <tt>/etc/fstab</tt>. This is limited to cases in which the kernel resides on the Linux root (<tt>/</tt>) filesystem, though, and it won't work if the installation requires any unusual options.</li>
 224
 225 <li>As of rEFInd 0.9.0, if a Linux root (<tt>/</tt>) filesystem is identified by the type code specified by the <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/">Discoverable Partitions Specification (DPS)</a> and the root filesystem cannot be identified via <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> or <tt>/etc/fstab</tt>, rEFInd passes a kernel <tt>root=</tt> identifier based on the identified DPS root (<tt>/</tt>) type code.</li>
 226
 227 <li>Fixes to display problems on many UEFI-based PCs.</li>
 228
 229 <li>Beginning with version 0.6.10, a screen saver feature, activated by the <tt>screensaver <tt class="variable">seconds</tt></tt> token in <tt>refind.conf</tt>: Set <tt class="variable">seconds</tt> to the number of seconds before the screen will blank to prevent burn-in.</li>
 230
 231 <li>Workarounds to file detection bugs in at least one type of UEFI firmware.</li>
 232
 233 <li>Improved detection of itself, to keep rEFInd out of its own boot menu.</li>
 234
 235 <li>Detection of a fallback boot loader (<tt>EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi</tt> or <tt>EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi</tt>) that's redundant with another boot loader, to keep the fallback boot loader out of menus when it's unnecessary.</li>
 236
 237 <li>An "exit" option (disabled by default), so that you can return to whatever shell or boot manager you used to launch rEFInd, should this ability be desirable. (This feature first appeared in rEFInd 0.2.4.)</li>
 238
 239 <li>Drivers for ISO-9660, NTFS, HFS+, ext4fs, and Btrfs, which are not included in rEFIt. The ISO-9660 driver is based on code from the rEFIt project, but was never completed by its original author. It was completed by Oracle for VirtualBox. The ext4fs driver is derived from the rEFIt ext2fs driver, and the Btrfs and NTFS drivers are derived from the rEFIt and GRUB 2.0 driver code.</li>
 240
 241 <li>Beginning with version 0.5.0, the ability to "talk" to the <a href="http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20303.html">shim boot loader</a> to validate binaries supported by shim or its machine owner key (MOK) list when booting with Secure Boot active.</li>
 242
 243 <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> utility, included with rEFInd 0.6.9 and later, has safety checks to prevent creating a fresh hybrid MBR if the MBR side has been adjusted without adjusting the GPT side&mdash;a common source of problems. This update also prioritizes partition inclusion in the hybrid MBR, which can help on disks that have many partitions. OTOH, as of rEFInd 0.6.9, this version of <tt>gptsync</tt> is relatively untested.</li>
 244
 245 <li>The ability to set the VMX bit on certain Intel CPUs. This feature is necessary for certain virtualization tools, such as Hyper-V, and not all EFIs enable users to set it.</li>
 246
 247 <li>Beginning with version 0.10.0, the ability to spoof the booting of OS X when booting non-Apple OSes. This changes the way a Mac's EFI initializes hardware, which can get secondary video chipsets working on some Macs. This feature is controlled via the <tt>spoof_osx_version</tt> token in <tt>refind.conf</tt>.</li>
 248
 249 <li>Beginning with version 0.10.0, the ability to adjust Apple System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless" or "CSR") settings. These settings control what features are off-limits even to <tt>root</tt> in OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) and later. To use this feature, you must set specific CSR values on <tt>refind.conf</tt>'s <tt>csr_values</tt> line <i>and</i> add <tt>csr_rotate</tt> to the <tt>showtools</tt> line.</li>
 250
 251 </ul>
 252
 253 <p>On the flip side, at least for Mac users, rEFInd comes with less sophisticated Mac installation tools than does rEFIt, in favor of more OS-agnostic packaging.</p>
 254
 255 <p>If these features sound useful, then read on and try rEFInd. If not, you may need to look elsewhere. My <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html">Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux</a> page may be useful to you in this case.</p>
 256
 257 <hr />
 258
 259 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2015 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 260
 261 <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>
 262
 263 <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>
 264
 265 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 266
 267 <p><a href="getting.html">Learn how to obtain rEFInd</a></p>
 268
 269   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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