]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/getting.html
0.5.1.1 release (changed install.sh & documentation, nothing to main
[refind] / docs / refind / getting.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: Getting 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 />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 12/12/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.5.1.1</p>
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>
21
22 <table border="1">
23 <tr>
24 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
25 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
26 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
27 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
28 <td>Donate another value</td>
29 </tr>
30 <tr>
31 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
32 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
33 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
34 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
35 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
36 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
37 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
38 </form>
39
40 </td>
41 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
42 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
43 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
44 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
45 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
46 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
47 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
48 </form>
49
50 </td>
51 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
52 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
53 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
54 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
55 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
56 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
57 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
58 </form>
59
60 </td>
61 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
62 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
63 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
64 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
65 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
66 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
67 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
68 </form>
69
70 </td>
71 <td>
72 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
73 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
74 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
75 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
76 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
77 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
78 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
79 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
80 <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!">
81 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
82 </form>
83 </td></tr>
84 </table>
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><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>
93
94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
95
96 <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 four different forms:</p>
97
98 <ul>
99
100 <li><b><a
101 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.5.1.1/refind-src-0.5.1.1.zip/download">A
102 source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
103 compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
104 href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
105 Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binaries (below), although the
106 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
107 development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
108 toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
109 possible, but I've not attempted it.</li>
110
111 <li><b><a
112 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.5.1.1/refind-bin-0.5.1.1.zip/download">A
113 binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
114 rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
115 computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
116 optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
117 and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
118 Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
119 href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
120
121 <!--
122 <li><b><a
123 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
124 binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
125 like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
126 development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
127 that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
128 develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
129 (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
130 TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
131 either build.)</li>
132 -->
133
134 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 ESP, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1</tt> to install to the first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.</p>
135
136 <li><b><a
137 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.5.1.1/refind-cd-0.5.1.1.zip/download">A
138 CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
139 the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
140 (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
141 UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
142 copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
143 such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
144 or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
145 shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
146 so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
147 don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
148 be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
149 shell.</li>
150
151 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
152 git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
153 browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
154 and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
155 method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
156 familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
157 git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
158
159 </ul>
160
161 <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>
162
163 <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>
164
165 <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>
166
167 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
168
169 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
170
171 <ul>
172
173 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
174 repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
175 installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
176 rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
177 name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
178 pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
179 poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
180 Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
181 UEFI-based PCs.</li>
182
183 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
184 collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
185 OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
186
187 <li><b><a
188 href="https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=refind&project=home%3Amichael-chang%3AUEFI">OpenSUSE
189 Build Service (OBS)</a></b>&mdash;This site holds a binary x86-64 build
190 of rEFInd that should install on any RPM-based distribution. It doesn't
191 completely set up rEFInd, though; it just places the rEFInd files in
192 the <tt>/usr/share/refind</tt> directory, and a copy of
193 <tt>install.sh</tt> as <tt>/usr/sbin/refind_install</tt>.
194 Unfortunately, the script makes assumptions about the locations of
195 files and so is useless when files are moved around in this way. Thus,
196 you'll need to install manually after installing this RPM, so you might
197 as well download the rEFInd binary <tt>.zip</tt> file from Sourceforge
198 instead.</li>
199
200 </ul>
201
202 <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>
203
204 <hr />
205
206 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
207
208 <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>
209
210 <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>
211
212 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
213
214 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
215
216 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
217 </body>
218 </html>