code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/getting.html

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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 5/15/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.8.1</p>
  19
  20 <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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  99 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 100 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 101 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
 102 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 103 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
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 107 </td>
 108
 109 <td>
 110 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
 111 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
 112 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
 113 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 114 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 115 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 116 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 117 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
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 121 </td></tr>
 122 </table>
 123
 124 <hr />
 125
 126 <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>
 127
 128 <hr />
 129
 130 <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>
 131
 132 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
 133
 134 <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 several different forms:</p>
 135
 136 <ul>
 137
 138 <li><b><a
 139     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-bin-0.8.1.zip/download">A
 140     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 141     rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
 142     computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
 143     optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
 144     and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
 145     Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
 146     href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page. Some users of Arch
 147     Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
 148     with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a <a
 149     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.8.1.zip/download">variant
 150     package</a> exists in which the <i>x</i>86-64 binary was compiled with
 151     GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
 152     users with this problem.</li>
 153
 154 <li><b><a
 155     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-0.8.1-1.x86_64.rpm/download">A
 156     binary RPM file</a></b>&mdash;If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64
 157     Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
 158     package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
 159     equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the <tt>install.sh</tt>
 160     script (described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing
 161     rEFInd</a> page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
 162     maintainers can examine the <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source
 163     package and tweak it to their needs. The <a
 164     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-0.8.1-1.src.rpm/download">source
 165     RPM file</a> might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
 166     on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
 167     files.</li>
 168
 169 <li><b><a
 170     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind_0.8.1-1_amd64.deb/download">A
 171     binary Debian package</a></b>&mdash;If you use an <i>x</i>86-64 version
 172     of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
 173     install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
 174     package using <tt>alien</tt>.</li>
 175
 176 <!--
 177 <li><b><a
 178     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 179     binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
 180     like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
 181     development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
 182     that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
 183     develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
 184     (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
 185     TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
 186     either build.)</li>
 187 -->
 188
 189 <p class="sidebar"><b>Note:</b> At the moment, neither the bootable CD-R image file nor the bootable USB flash drive image file supports booting with Secure Boot active. The x86-64 version of the <a href="http://en.altlinux.org/Rescue">ALT Linux Rescue disc</a> uses a Secure Boot-enabled rEFInd, though, so you may find that useful in some situations.</p>
 190
 191 <li><b><a
 192     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-cd-0.8.1.zip/download">A
 193     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 194     the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
 195     (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
 196     UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
 197     copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
 198     such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
 199     or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
 200     shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
 201     so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
 202     don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
 203     be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
 204     shell.</li>
 205
 206 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want to make your own bootable USB
 207 flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB
 208 flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt>
 209 program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the
 210 <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh
 211 --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition
 212 on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted
 213 computer.</p>
 214
 215 <li><b><a
 216     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-flashdrive-0.8.1.zip/download">A
 217     USB flash drive image file</a></b>&mdash;Although you     can create
 218     your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
 219     this version and copy it to your USB drive with <tt>dd</tt> or some
 220     other low-level disk copying utility.</li>
 221
 222 <li><b><a
 223     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.8.1/refind-src-0.8.1.zip/download">A
 224     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to compile
 225     the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 226     href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
 227     Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary packages (above),
 228     although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
 229     development tools are also supported.</li>
 230
 231 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 232     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 233     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 234     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 235     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 236     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 237     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 238
 239 </ul>
 240
 241 <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>
 242
 243 <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>
 244
 245 <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>
 246
 247 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 248
 249 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
 250
 251 <ul>
 252
 253 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
 254     repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
 255     installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
 256     rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
 257     name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
 258     pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
 259     poorly tested or undocumented.</li>
 260
 261 <li><b>ALT Linux</b>&mdash;This RPM-based distribution is experimenting
 262     with using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT
 263     developers haven't yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a
 264     tricky and delicate task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image),
 265     but they're working on the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see <a
 266     href="http://packages.altlinux.org/en/Sisyphus/srpms/refind">this
 267     page</a> for details.</li>
 268
 269 <li><b><a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/">Fat
 270     Dog</a></b>&mdash;This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
 271     rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
 272     provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.</li>
 273
 274 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
 275     collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
 276     OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
 277
 278 <li><b>Slackware</b>&mdash;Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
 279     build, <a href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this
 280     site</a> has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
 281     14.0.</li>
 282
 283 </ul>
 284
 285 <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>
 286
 287 <hr />
 288
 289 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2014 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 290
 291 <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>
 292
 293 <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>
 294
 295 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 296
 297 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 298
 299   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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