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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of 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: 4/22/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.0</p>
  18
  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>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
  93
  94 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
  95
  96 <p>Without further ado, then, and in no particular order:</p>
  97
  98 <ul>
  99
 100 <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones I've
 101     made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 102     unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to add
 103     features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for bugs to
 104     get into the program. I can only test on a handful of systems with a
 105     limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you try rEFInd and run
 106     into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 107
 108 <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86 or
 109     <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its "About"
 110     screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd like to add detection for Itanium
 111     and ARM systems, but I have no way to test such changes.</li>
 112
 113 <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so rEFInd's
 114     boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have artistic talent
 115     and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel free to send it to
 116     me. I won't make any final decision about changes until at least June
 117     30 of 2012.</li>
 118
 119 <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 120     theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new theme
 121     for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not replace the
 122     icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen Icons package),
 123     but I may provide a way to make selecting a theme from one of several
 124     installed themes easy, and provide links to themes on this Web site (or
 125     even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more information
 126     on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a href="themes.html">Theming
 127     rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 128
 129 <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of various
 130     graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to version
 131     0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with 800x600 and
 132     smaller displays because of an inability to properly crop the graphics
 133     fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2, I've put a band-aid on
 134     this problem by reducing the field size so that it now works on 800x600
 135     displays, but smaller displays still suffer from this problem. This is
 136     just an example of the inflexibility of certain layout issues within
 137     rEFInd.</li>
 138
 139 <li>Text mode has a known display glitch: Not all loaders are shown until
 140     you use the cursor keys to move down the list, effectively "drawing"
 141     the "invisible" tags. This obviously needs to be fixed.</li>
 142
 143 <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple image
 144     sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file, rEFInd
 145     can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the desired size
 146     would be useful.</li>
 147
 148 <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if it
 149     would.</li>
 150
 151 <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot loader
 152     resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID from the
 153     partition data is harder than extracting the volume's label or counting
 154     up the filesystem numbers.</li>
 155
 156 <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders and/or
 157     initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the boot
 158     loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 159
 160 <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 161     BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I can
 162     see how it could be for some people.</li>
 163
 164 <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
 165     UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on Macs&mdash;or
 166     at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my UEFI-based PCs. (I
 167     have an idea about this, but haven't yet investigated it in detail. If
 168     you'd like to help on this, <a
 169     href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
 170     thoughts.)</li>
 171
 172 <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte Hybrid
 173     EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 174     <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 175     This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance: Changing
 176     the case of icon filename extensions (or various other parts of icon
 177     filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly "generic" ones; and
 178     rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the firmware sometimes
 179     returns an all-caps version of the filename, but other times returns
 180     the filename with the correct case, causing a mismatch if the path
 181     includes lowercase elements). Some of these problems can be overcome by
 182     converting both strings to be compared to one case before doing the
 183     comparison, but others aren't so easy, since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt>
 184     is being called internally to the EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to
 185     fix some of these problems. OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on
 186     just one EFI implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined
 187     to just let it go.</li>
 188
 189 <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 190     whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7. Unfortunately,
 191     I lack the hardware to test this.</li>
 192
 193 <li>The Page Up and Page Down keys work in a rather strange way&mdash;a
 194     result of an admittedly quick fix on my part to a problem with a data
 195     structure that makes implementation of scrolling harder than it ought
 196     to be.</li>
 197
 198 <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
 199     On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 200     fixed.</li>
 201
 202 <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for boot
 203     options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.</li>
 204
 205 <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot loader
 206     settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or change its
 207     icon.</li>
 208
 209 <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>, <tt>bless</tt>,
 210     or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot set would be
 211     useful.</li>
 212
 213 <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful. This
 214     would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk boot.
 215     Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be launched
 216     much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
 217
 218 <li>I'd like to find a way to have rEFInd re-scan removable media when
 219     they're inserted.</li>
 220
 221 <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
 222     per-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
 223
 224 <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and similar
 225     problems.</p>
 226
 227 </ul>
 228
 229 <hr />
 230
 231 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 232
 233 <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>
 234
 235 <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>
 236
 237 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 238
 239 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 240
 241   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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