]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/todo.html
Refinements to image-sizing code; 0.7.8 release version.
[refind] / docs / refind / todo.html
1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
3 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
4
5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
6 <head>
7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
8 <link href="../Styles/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
9 </head>
10
11 <body>
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:
18 3/9/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.7.8</p>
19
20
21 <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>
22
23 <table border="1">
24 <tr>
25 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
26 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
27 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
28 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
29 <td>Donate $20.00</td>
30 <td>Donate another value</td>
31 </tr>
32 <tr>
33
34 <td>
35 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
36 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
37 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
38 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
39 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
40 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
41 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
42 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
43 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
44 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
45 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
46 </form>
47 </td>
48
49 <td>
50 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
51 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
52 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
53 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
54 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
55 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
56 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
57 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
58 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
59 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
60 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
61 </form>
62 </td>
63
64
65 <td>
66 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
67 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
68 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
69 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
70 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
71 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
72 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
73 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
74 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
75 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
76 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
77 </form>
78 </td>
79
80 <td>
81 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
82 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
83 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
84 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
85 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
86 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
87 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
88 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
89 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
90 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
91 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
92 </form>
93 </td>
94
95 <td>
96 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
97 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
98 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
99 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
100 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
101 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
102 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
103 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
104 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
105 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
106 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
107 </form>
108 </td>
109
110 <td>
111 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
112 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
113 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
114 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
115 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
116 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
117 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
118 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
119 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
120 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
121 </form>
122 </td></tr>
123 </table>
124
125 <hr />
126
127 <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>
128
129 <hr />
130
131 <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>
132
133 <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>
134
135 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
136
137 <ul>
138
139 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
140
141 <ul>
142
143 <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
144 I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
145 unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
146 add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
147 bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
148 systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
149 try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
150
151 <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
152 theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
153 theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
154 replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
155 Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
156 (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
157 information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
158 href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
159
160 </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
161
162 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
163
164 <ul>
165
166 <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
167 currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
168 off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
169 prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
170 boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
171 optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
172 icons.</li>
173
174 <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
175 or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
176 "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
177 like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
178 way to test such changes.</li>
179
180 <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
181 purposes.</li>
182
183 <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
184 use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
185 characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
186 monospace fonts.</li>
187
188 <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
189 loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
190 from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
191 label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</li>
192
193 <li>Currently, if a filesystem's label comes up empty, rEFInd
194 substitutes the size, so you get displays like <tt>boot
195 EFI\foo\bar.efi from 90 GiB volume</tt>. I'd like to add more
196 checks to substitute the GPT <i>partition</i> label if the
197 <i>filesystem</i> label comes up empty.</li>
198
199 <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the
200 <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some form
201 of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
202 optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
203
204 <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
205 and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
206 boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
207
208 <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
209 information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
210 upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
211 transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
212
213 </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
214
215 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
216
217 <ul>
218
219 <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
220 some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
221 user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
222 that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
223 a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
224 removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
225 remission.</li>
226
227 <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
228 Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
229 <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
230 This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
231 Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
232 parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
233 "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
234 firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
235 other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
236 mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
237 problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
238 to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
239 since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
240 EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
241 OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
242 implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
243 let it go.</li>
244
245 <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
246 PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
247 fixed.</li>
248
249 <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
250 UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
251 Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
252 do it.</li>
253
254 <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
255 features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
256 but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
257 Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
258 causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
259 (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
260 unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
261 have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
262 receiving a patch.</li>
263
264 <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
265 ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
266 This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
267
268 <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
269 re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
270 nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
271 EFI.</li>
272
273 <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
274 re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
275 have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
276 caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
277 shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
278
279 <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
280 slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
281 in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
282 volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
283 /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
284 and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
285
286 <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
287 similar problems.</li>
288
289 <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
290 or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
291 RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
292 already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
293 duplication with more filesystems.</li>
294
295 <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
296 when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
297 test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
298 exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
299 href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
300 <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
301 <a
302 href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
303 by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though.</li>
304
305 </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
306
307 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
308
309 <ul>
310
311 <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
312 it would.</li>
313
314 <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
315 BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
316 can see how it could be for some people.</li>
317
318 <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
319 whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
320 Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
321 understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
322 installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
323 See <a
324 href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
325 forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
326
327 <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
328 boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
329 One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
330 stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
331 boot loader file.</li>
332
333 <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
334 information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
335 disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
336 the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
337 and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
338
339 <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
340 A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
341 requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
342 only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
343 as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
344 written in C.</li>
345
346 <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
347 loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
348 change its icon.</li>
349
350 <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
351 monitors would be helpful.</li>
352
353 <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
354 priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
355 written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
356 can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
357
358 </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
359
360 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
361
362 <ul>
363
364 <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
365 are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
366 welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
367 BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
368 Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
369 for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
370
371 <li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
372 what the volume's real label is.</li>
373
374 <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
375 to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
376 desirable.</li>
377
378 <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
379 one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
380 <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
381 computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
382 This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
383 since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
384 that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
385
386 </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
387
388 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
389 support tools:</b>
390
391 <ul>
392
393 <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
394 under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
395 partition table. Fix this.</li>
396
397 <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
398 package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
399 shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
400 to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
401 message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
402 that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
403 really the case.</li>
404
405 <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
406
407 </ul></li>
408
409 </ul>
410
411 <hr />
412
413 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2014 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
414
415 <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>
416
417 <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>
418
419 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
420
421 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
422
423 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
424 </body>
425 </html>