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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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11 <body>
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: 4/22/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.0</p>
18
19 <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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84
85 <hr />
86
87 <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>
88
89 <hr />
90
91 <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>
92
93 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
94
95 <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 three different forms:</p>
96
97 <ul>
98
99 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.0/refind-src-0.3.0.zip/download">A
100 source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
101 compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
102 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
103 tools. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to
104 that toolchain is theoretically possible, but I've not attempted
105 it.</li>
106
107 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.0/refind-bin-0.3.0.zip/download">A
108 binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install rEFInd on
109 an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64 computer and have no need to test rEFInd
110 first by booting it on an optical disc. This zip file package includes both
111 <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32) and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T)
112 versions of rEFInd. Which you install depends on your architecture, as
113 described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
114
115 <li><b><a
116 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.3.0/refind-cd-0.3.0.zip/download">A
117 CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
118 the zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd without
119 installing it first. (It boots on UEFI PCs, but fails on some older
120 Macs.) If you like it, you can then copy the files from the CD-R to
121 your hard disk. The files are named in such a way that the disc should
122 boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64) or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI
123 computers. Note that there's a bug that causes rEFInd to complain about
124 invalid parameters while scanning various directories. You can safely
125 ignore this message, but you'll need to press a key to dismiss it. I've
126 included an open source EFI shell program on this disc that's not
127 included in the binary zip file, so that you can access an EFI shell
128 from a bootable disc even if you don't have an EFI shell available from
129 your regular hard disk. This can be an extremely valuable diagnostic
130 tool if you know about about using an EFI shell.</li>
131
132 </ul>
133
134 <p>If you're using another platform, 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>
135
136 <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>
137
138 <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>
139
140 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
141
142 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57632">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57966">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>
143
144 <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>
145
146 <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>
147
148 <hr />
149
150 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
151
152 <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>
153
154 <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>
155
156 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
157
158 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
159
160 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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