]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - NEWS.txt
Version 0.10.2 release.
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.10.2 (1/26/2016):
2 -------------------
3
4 - Fixed bug in refind-install that caused mountesp to be installed as a FILE
5 called /usr/local/bin on OS X if the /usr/local/bin directory did not
6 already exist.
7
8 - Fixed bug in mvrefind that caused it to fail to move bootmgfw.efi in
9 some situations, and another that caused it to give the resulting NVRAM
10 entry the default rEFInd name of "rEFInd Boot Manager," rather than the
11 intended "Windows Boot Manager" (to work around bugs in some EFIs).
12
13 - Worked around bug/quirk in some EFIs (in HP ProBook 6470b laptop, at
14 least) that prevented EFI filesystem drivers from working. (Drivers would
15 load but not provide access to filesystems.)
16
17 - Fixed refind-install bug that caused --usedefault option to not work in OS
18 X. (This bug did not affect Linux.)
19
20 - Improved Secure Boot detection in refind-install in Linux.
21
22 - Fixed bug that caused custom volume badges (vol_*.png) to be read only
23 from default location ("icons" subdirectory), effectively eliminating the
24 ability to adjust them.
25
26 - Added centos.crt and centos.cer public key files.
27
28 0.10.1 (12/12/2015):
29 --------------------
30
31 - Change to PPA version: Installing the PPA now queries the user about
32 whether to install to the ESP. Upgrades will remember the initial
33 selection.
34
35 - Modified time-based sorting of loaders in a single directory to push
36 anything starting with "vmlinuz-0-rescue" to the end of the list. Fedora
37 gives its rescue kernels filenames that begin with that string, and if
38 such a kernel happens to be the most recent, treating it normally will
39 cause it to become the default when kernel folding is in use. This is
40 almost certainly undesirable, so this change keeps the rescue kernel at
41 the end of the list instead, which is saner.
42
43 - Significantly reworked the project's Makefiles. This should have no
44 impact on ordinary users, and even most developers should barely notice
45 it; but it should make future extensions to additional platforms or
46 building in different environments easier.
47
48 - Added workaround to gptsync for issue with some Macs' EFIs that caused
49 the program to skip through all prompts, thus accepting the default
50 option. This would normally cause gptsync to do nothing.
51
52 - Added type code 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage,
53 gdisk type AF05) to list of partition types recognized by gptsync.
54
55 - Removed Luxi Sans Mono font, since I discovered it was not open source;
56 and changed the default font from Nimbus Mono to Liberation Mono.
57
58 - Added support for compiling rEFInd for ARM64 (aka AARCH64 or aa64). This
59 works with both GNU-EFI and Tianocore UDK2014.SP1.P1. This support is
60 currently poorly tested. In particular, I used QEMU on an x86-64 computer
61 to create a virtualized ARM64 environment; I've not yet tested on a real
62 computer. I couldn't get QEMU to create a video card, so I used a serial
63 terminal, which means that the graphics features are untested -- I ran
64 rEFInd with "textonly" uncommented in refind.conf. I've tested the ext4fs
65 driver but no other drivers, although they all compile. (So does gptsync,
66 although it's unlikely to be useful on ARM64.) Some rEFInd features are
67 meaningless on ARM64, such as BIOS-mode boot support, anything geared
68 toward Macs (csr_values/csr_rotate, spoof_osx_version, etc.), and
69 enable_and_lock_vmx.
70
71 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan EFI boot loaders on
72 removable media when rEFInd itself was launched from the fallback
73 filename.
74
75 - Moved detailed descriptions of refind-install from installing.html to
76 a refind-install man page. To keep this information Web-accessible, I've
77 also created HTML versions of the three man pages and linked them into
78 the HTML documentation.
79
80 - Updated LodePNG to latest version (20151024).
81
82 - Fixed bugs in mkrlconf and in refind-install that could cause some kernel
83 options to be excluded from refind_linux.conf. There were two trouble
84 conditions:
85 - Previously, these scripts assumed that the first option in
86 /proc/cmdline was the kernel's filename, but this isn't always the
87 case. (In particular, when gummiboot launches the kernel, this is not
88 true. It might be an incorrect assumption in some other cases, too.)
89 The fix involves checking for likely signs of a kernel filename before
90 discarding this first option.
91 - These scripts cut the "initrd=*" option from /proc/cmdline, but the
92 call to "sed" was overzealous and cut until the end of input. This
93 usually worked, since the initrd= option was usually last on the line;
94 but if it wasn't, any options following initrd= would be lost.
95
96 - Added "kernel*" as a matching pattern for Linux kernels, since this is
97 what Gentoo uses by default.
98
99 - The refind-install script can now be run as a symbolic link in Linux.
100 This enables creating a /usr/sbin/refind-install link in Linux packages,
101 with the binaries stashed wherever the package system likes them. This
102 feature does NOT work in OS X, but there's relatively little need for it
103 there.
104
105 0.10.0 (11/8/2015):
106 -------------------
107
108 - Fixed bug that caused refind-install to not unmount the ESP when it
109 should under OS X.
110
111 - Modified refind-install and mkrlconf scripts to use /proc/cmdline as
112 source for default boot options EXCEPT when refind-install receives the
113 --root option. In that case, refind-install continues to use
114 /etc/default/grub as the source of default options. The idea behind this
115 change is that it's more reliable to get boot options from /proc/cmdline
116 when the targeted system is the one that's booted; but --root would be
117 used from emergency disks or live CDs, in which case the current boot
118 options would be completely wrong, so extracting boot options from GRUB
119 files is the best bet for getting close to the right options.
120
121 - Added "@/boot" to default also_scan_dirs setting. This makes kernels
122 show up on Btrfs volumes under Ubuntu (and perhaps others), at least when
123 the Btrfs driver is loaded.
124
125 - Added new System Integrity Protection (SIP) rotation feature for Macs
126 running OS X 10.11 or later. This feature is disabled by default, except
127 on CD-R and USB flash drive images, on which it's enabled. To enable it,
128 you must make TWO changes to refind.conf: Uncomment the new "csr_values"
129 item and add "csr_rotate" to the "showtools" line (uncommenting it, too,
130 if it's commented out). If desired, you can set more values on
131 "csr_values"; these are comma-delimited one-byte hexadecimal values that
132 define various SIP states. When SIP/CSR rotation is activated, a new
133 shield icon appears among the tools. Selecting it causes the next defined
134 value to be set and a confirmation message to appear for three seconds.
135
136 - Added display of current System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode to
137 "About" display.
138
139 - Added mountesp script for OS X to (you guessed it!) mount the ESP.
140
141 - Renamed support scripts: install.sh to refind-install, mvrefind.sh to
142 mvrefind, and mkrlconf.sh to mkrlconf.
143
144 - New icons! The old ones were getting to be a jumbled mess of styles,
145 particularly for OS tags. I used the AwOken icon set
146 (http://alecive.deviantart.com/art/AwOken-163570862) for the core icons,
147 then expanded from there by creating my own icons and modifying icons for
148 Debian and Elementary OS. I'm also trying to keep better track of
149 copyrights and licenses on icons. Between that and some icons being for
150 OSes that probably see very little use (FreeDOS and eComstation, for
151 instance), a few OS icons have been lost. If you prefer the old icons,
152 you can continue to use them by upgrading rEFInd, renaming icons-backup
153 to something else (say, icons-classic), and then adding an "icons" line
154 in refind.conf to point to the old icons directory.
155
156 - Changed from .zip to .tar.gz as source code archive format. I did this
157 because Linux is the only officially-supported build platform, and
158 tarballs are a more natural fit to a Linux environment. I'm leaving .zip,
159 .deb, and .rpm files as the formats for binary packages.
160
161 - Added detection of System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless") mode
162 to OS X portion of install.sh script. When detected, and if no existing
163 rEFInd installation is found, the script now prints a warning and brief
164 instructions of how to enter the Recovery mode to install rEFInd and
165 suggests aborting the installation. (The user can override and attempt
166 installation anyhow.) If SIP is detected along with an existing rEFInd
167 installation, the script moderates the warning and explains that an
168 update of a working rEFInd will probably succeed, but that re-installing
169 to fix a broken rEFInd will probably fail.
170
171 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
172 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
173 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
174 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
175 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
176 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
177 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
178
179 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
180 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
181 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
182 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
183 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
184 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
185 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
186 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
187 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
188 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
189 workaround.)
190
191 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
192 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
193 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
194 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
195 boot.
196
197 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
198 ------------------
199
200 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
201 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
202 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
203 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
204 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
205 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
206 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
207 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
208 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
209 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
210 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
211
212 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
213 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
214 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
215 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
216 Secure Boot db list.
217
218 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
219 ------------------
220
221 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
222 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
223 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
224 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
225 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
226 or "ro" option to the kernel.
227 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
228 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
229 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
230 system has more than one with the correct type code.
231
232 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
233 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
234 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
235 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
236 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
237 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
238 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
239 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
240 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
241
242 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
243 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
244 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
245 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
246
247 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
248
249 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
250 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
251 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
252 closely-related distributions.
253
254 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
255 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
256 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
257 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
258 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
259 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
260 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
261 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
262 potentially buggy system calls.
263
264 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
265 ------------------
266
267 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
268
269 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
270 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
271 EDK2.)
272
273 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
274 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
275 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
276 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
277 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
278 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
279 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
280 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
281
282 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
283 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
284 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
285 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
286 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
287 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
288 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
289 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
290 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
291
292 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
293 file was encountered.
294
295 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
296 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
297 under OS X.
298
299 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
300 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
301 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
302
303 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
304 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
305 IA32.
306
307 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
308 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
309 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
310 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
311 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
312 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
313
314 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
315 -----------------
316
317 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
318 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
319 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
320
321 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
322
323 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
324 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
325 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
326
327 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
328 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
329
330 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
331 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
332 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
333 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
334 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
335 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
336
337 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
338 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
339 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
340 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
341 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
342
343 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
344 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
345 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
346 such as the ASUS T100.)
347
348 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
349 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
350 of the efitools package.
351
352 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
353
354 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
355
356 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
357 itself.
358
359 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
360 -----------------
361
362 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
363 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
364 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
365
366 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
367 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
368 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
369 used universally.
370
371 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
372 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
373 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
374 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
375
376 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
377 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
378 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
379
380 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
381 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
382
383 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
384 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
385
386 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
387 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
388 selection images to fail to load.
389
390 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
391 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
392
393 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
394 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
395
396
397 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
398 -----------------
399
400 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
401
402 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
403
404 - Changes to
405
406 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
407
408 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
409 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
410 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
411 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
412 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
413 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
414 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
415 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
416
417 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
418
419 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
420 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
421 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
422 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
423 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
424
425 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
426 from other than the first hard disk.
427
428
429 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
430 ------------------
431
432 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
433 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
434 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
435
436 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
437
438 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
439 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
440 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
441 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
442
443 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
444 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
445 mode.
446
447 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
448 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
449 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
450 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
451
452 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
453 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
454 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
455
456 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
457 building and basic use instructions).
458
459 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
460 -----------------
461
462 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
463 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
464 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
465 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
466 is displayed.
467
468 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
469 distribution.
470
471 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
472 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
473 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
474
475 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
476 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
477 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
478 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
479 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
480 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
481 change its license to a BSD license.
482
483 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
484 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
485 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
486
487 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
488 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
489 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
490 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
491 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
492 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
493 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
494 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
495 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
496 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
497 and ensure it's set to "false".
498
499 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
500 -------------------
501
502 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
503 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
504
505 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
506 -----------------
507
508 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
509 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
510 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
511 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
512 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
513 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
514 loader in the
515 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
516 variable under Linux.
517
518 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
519
520 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
521 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
522
523 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
524 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
525
526 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
527 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
528 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
529 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
530 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
531 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
532 override a setting in the main file).
533
534 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
535 ------------------
536
537 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
538 on the root directory of a partition.
539
540 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
541 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
542
543 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
544 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
545 second.
546
547 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
548 screens.
549
550 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
551 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
552 firmware).
553
554 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
555 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
556 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
557 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
558 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
559 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
560 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
561 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
562
563 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
564 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
565 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
566 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
567 volume and is used by OS X.
568
569 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
570 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
571
572 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
573 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
574
575 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
576 -----------------
577
578 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
579 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
580 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
581 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
582 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
583
584 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
585
586 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
587 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
588 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
589 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
590
591 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
592 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
593 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
594 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
595 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
596 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
597
598 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
599 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
600 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
601
602 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
603 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
604
605 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
606 ------------------
607
608 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
609 some Macs.
610
611 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
612 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
613 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
614
615 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
616 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
617
618 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
619
620 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
621 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
622 drivers.
623
624 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
625 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
626 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
627
628 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
629 utility."
630
631
632 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
633 -----------------
634
635 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
636 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
637 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
638 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
639 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
640 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
641 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
642
643 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
644 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
645 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
646 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
647 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
648 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
649 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
650 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
651
652 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
653 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
654 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
655 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
656 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
657 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
658
659 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
660 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
661 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
662 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
663 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
664
665 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
666 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
667 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
668 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
669 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
670 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
671 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
672 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
673 problems might arise.
674
675 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
676 -----------------
677
678 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
679 dont_scan_files.
680
681 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
682
683 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
684 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
685 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
686 utility on the second row of icons.
687
688 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
689 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
690 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
691 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
692 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
693
694 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
695 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
696 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
697
698 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
699 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
700 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
701 UUID.
702
703 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
704 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
705
706 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
707 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
708 under some circumstances.
709
710 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
711 -------------------
712
713 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
714 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
715 default_selection "fred,ginger"
716 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
717 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
718
719 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
720 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
721 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
722 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
723 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
724 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
725 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
726 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
727 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
728 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
729 depending on your computer.
730
731 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
732 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
733 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
734 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
735 screensaver will be disabled.
736
737 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
738 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
739 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
740 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
741 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
742
743 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
744 -------------------
745
746 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
747 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
748
749 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
750 versions of OS X to fail.
751
752 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
753 drivers were present.
754
755 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
756 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
757 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
758 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
759 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
760 black a second or so later.
761
762 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
763 --------------------
764
765 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
766 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
767 problem.
768
769 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
770 ------------------
771
772 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
773 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
774 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
775
776 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
777 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
778 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
779 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
780 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
781 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
782 default.
783
784 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
785 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
786 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
787 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
788
789 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
790 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
791 known case, but there may be others.)
792
793 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
794 -----------------
795
796 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
797 loaders on Macs.
798
799 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
800
801 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
802 -----------------
803
804 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
805 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
806
807 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
808 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
809
810 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
811 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
812
813 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
814 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
815 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
816 HashTool-signed.efi".
817
818 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
819
820 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
821 was broken.
822
823 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
824 was broken.
825
826 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
827 -----------------
828
829 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
830
831 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
832 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
833 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
834
835 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
836 volume specification, if present.
837
838 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
839
840 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
841 ------------------
842
843 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
844 type for volumes that lack labels.
845
846 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
847 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
848 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
849 though.
850
851 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
852 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
853 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
854 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
855 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
856 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
857 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
858 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
859
860 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
861 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
862 non-EFI loaders, etc.
863
864 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
865 code.
866
867 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
868 -------------------
869
870 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
871 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
872
873 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
874 script.
875
876 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
877 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
878 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
879 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
880
881 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
882 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
883 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
884 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
885
886 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
887 -------------------
888
889 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
890 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
891 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
892 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
893
894 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
895
896 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
897 directory names that contain spaces.
898
899 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
900 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
901 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
902 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
903 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
904
905 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
906 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
907
908 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
909 Utility" in menu.
910
911 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
912 partitions to fill the MBR.
913
914 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
915 ------------------
916
917 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
918 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
919 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
920 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
921
922 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
923 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
924 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
925 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
926 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
927
928 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
929 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
930 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
931 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
932 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
933 is quietly ignored.
934
935 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
936 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
937
938 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
939 encountered when saving a screen shot.
940
941 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
942 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
943 sequence number, starting with "001".
944
945 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
946 ------------------
947
948 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
949 Kemperman.
950
951 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
952 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
953
954 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
955 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
956 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
957
958 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
959 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
960 accidentally trash their systems.
961
962 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
963 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
964 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
965
966 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
967 ------------------
968
969 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
970 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
971
972 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
973 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
974
975 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
976 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
977
978 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
979
980 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
981 -----------------
982
983 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
984 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
985
986 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
987 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
988 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
989 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
990
991 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
992 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
993
994 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
995 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
996
997 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
998 also_scan_dirs list.
999
1000 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
1001
1002 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
1003 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
1004 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
1005
1006 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
1007 ------------------
1008
1009 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1010 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
1011 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
1012 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
1013 loader under the fallback name.
1014
1015 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
1016 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
1017 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
1018 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
1019 of 96 glyphs.
1020
1021 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
1022 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
1023
1024 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
1025 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
1026
1027 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
1028 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
1029 commented out or empty.
1030
1031 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
1032 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
1033
1034 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
1035 manual boot stanzas.
1036
1037 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
1038 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
1039
1040 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
1041 ------------------
1042
1043 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
1044 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
1045
1046 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
1047
1048 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
1049
1050 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
1051 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
1052
1053 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
1054
1055 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
1056 sized to cover these areas.
1057
1058 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
1059 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
1060 resolution!
1061
1062 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
1063 -----------------
1064
1065 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
1066 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
1067 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
1068 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
1069
1070 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
1071 startup on some systems.
1072
1073 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
1074 -----------------
1075
1076 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
1077 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
1078
1079 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
1080 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
1081
1082 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
1083 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
1084 burned to USB flash disks.
1085
1086 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
1087 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
1088 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
1089
1090 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1091 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
1092 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
1093 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
1094 from that installation.
1095
1096 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
1097 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
1098 than in EFI/refind.
1099
1100 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
1101 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
1102
1103 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
1104 -------------------
1105
1106 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
1107 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
1108 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
1109
1110 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
1111 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
1112 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
1113 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
1114 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
1115
1116 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
1117 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
1118 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
1119 Linux with the "make" command.
1120
1121 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
1122 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
1123
1124 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
1125 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
1126 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
1127 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
1128 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
1129 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
1130 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
1131 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
1132
1133 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
1134 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
1135 default.)
1136
1137 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
1138 -------------------
1139
1140 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
1141 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
1142 use on emergency discs.
1143
1144 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
1145 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
1146 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
1147 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
1148 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
1149 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
1150 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
1151 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
1152 handle.
1153
1154 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
1155
1156 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
1157 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
1158 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
1159 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
1160 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
1161 os_GENTOO.icns.
1162
1163 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
1164 mode.
1165
1166 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1167 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1168 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1169 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1170
1171 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1172 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1173 a boot loader launch failed.
1174
1175 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
1176 -------------------
1177
1178 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1179 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1180 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1181 options.
1182
1183 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1184 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1185 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1186 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1187
1188 - Added ext4fs driver!
1189
1190 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1191
1192 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1193
1194 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1195 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1196
1197 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1198 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1199 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1200 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1201 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1202 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1203 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1204 mode.
1205
1206 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1207 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1208 display even in graphics mode.
1209
1210 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1211 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1212
1213 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1214 disables the boot options editor.
1215
1216 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1217 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1218
1219 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1220 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1221 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1222
1223 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1224 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1225
1226 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1227 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1228 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1229 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1230 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1231 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1232
1233 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1234 on Linux systems.
1235
1236 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1237 ---------------------
1238
1239 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1240
1241 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1242 -------------------
1243
1244 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1245 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1246 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1247 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1248
1249 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1250 configuration file from a primary one.
1251
1252 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1253 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1254 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1255 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1256 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1257 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1258 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1259 LVM.)
1260
1261 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1262 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1263
1264 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1265 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1266 refind.conf.
1267
1268 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1269 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1270
1271 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1272 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1273 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1274
1275 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1276 ------------------
1277
1278 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1279 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1280 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1281 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1282 option:
1283 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1284
1285 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1286 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1287 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1288 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1289 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1290 for them makes sense.
1291
1292 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1293 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1294 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1295 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1296
1297 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1298 were not actually edited.
1299
1300 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1301 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1302 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1303 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1304 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1305
1306 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1307 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1308 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1309 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1310 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1311 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1312 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1313 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1314
1315 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1316 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1317 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1318
1319 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1320 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1321 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1322
1323 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1324 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1325 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1326 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1327
1328 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1329 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1330 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1331
1332 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1333 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1334
1335 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1336 ------------------
1337
1338 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1339
1340 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1341 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1342 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1343
1344 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1345 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1346 told isn't working as planned).
1347
1348 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1349 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1350 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1351 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1352
1353 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1354 ------------------
1355
1356 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1357
1358 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1359 for disks.
1360
1361 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1362 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1363 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1364 done this for two reasons:
1365 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1366 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1367 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1368 default for them should help them.
1369 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1370 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1371 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1372 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1373 default configurations.
1374
1375 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1376
1377 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1378 ------------------
1379
1380 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1381
1382 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1383
1384 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1385 ------------------
1386
1387 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1388 32-bit systems.
1389
1390 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1391 on 32-bit systems.
1392
1393 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1394 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1395 loaders/OSes.
1396
1397 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1398
1399 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1400 ------------------
1401
1402 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1403 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1404
1405 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1406 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1407 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1408 graphics or text mode itself.)
1409
1410 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1411 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1412 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1413 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1414 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1415 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1416 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1417
1418 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1419
1420 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1421 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1422 "linux.conf" themselves.
1423
1424 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1425 -----------------
1426
1427 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1428 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1429 via rEFInd.
1430
1431 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1432 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1433 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1434 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1435 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1436 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1437 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1438 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1439 the boot order).
1440
1441 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1442 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1443
1444 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1445 ------------------
1446
1447 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1448 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1449 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1450 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1451 system hasn't hung.
1452
1453 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1454 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1455
1456 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1457
1458 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1459 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1460 label.)
1461
1462 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1463 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1464
1465 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1466 ------------------
1467
1468 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1469 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1470 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1471 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1472 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1473 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1474 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1475
1476 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1477 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1478 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1479
1480 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1481 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1482 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1483 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1484
1485 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1486 file when launched from rEFInd.
1487
1488 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1489 ------------------
1490
1491 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1492 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1493
1494 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1495 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1496 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1497 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1498 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1499 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1500
1501 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1502 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1503
1504 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1505 -----------------
1506
1507 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1508 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1509 sample configuration file for a full description.
1510
1511 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1512 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1513 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1514 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1515 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1516
1517 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1518 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1519 target).
1520
1521 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1522 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1523
1524 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1525 -----------------
1526
1527 - Improved menu navigation:
1528 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1529 down arrows move between rows.
1530 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1531 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1532 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1533 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1534
1535 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1536 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1537 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1538
1539 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1540 -----------------
1541
1542 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1543 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1544 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1545 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1546 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1547 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1548 will fail to work.
1549
1550 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1551 mode.
1552
1553 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1554
1555 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1556 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1557 options.
1558
1559
1560 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1561 ------------------
1562
1563 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1564 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1565
1566 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1567 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1568 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1569 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1570 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1571 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1572 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1573 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1574 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1575 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1576 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1577
1578 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1579 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1580 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1581 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1582 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1583
1584 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1585 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1586
1587 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1588 ------------------
1589
1590 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1591 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1592 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1593 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1594 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1595 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1596
1597 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1598 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1599 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1600 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1601 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1602 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1603 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1604 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1605 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1606 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1607 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1608 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1609 that resets the video mode.
1610
1611 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1612 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1613 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1614 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1615 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1616 details.
1617
1618 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1619 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1620 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1621 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1622 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1623 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1624
1625 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1626 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1627 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1628
1629 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1630 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1631 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1632 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1633
1634 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1635 ------------------
1636
1637 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1638 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1639 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1640 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1641 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1642 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1643 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1644 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1645 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1646 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1647 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1648 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1649 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1650 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1651 installation.
1652
1653 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1654
1655 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1656 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1657 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1658 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1659 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1660 directories you like.
1661
1662 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1663 ------------------
1664
1665 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1666 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1667 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1668 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1669 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1670 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1671 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1672 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1673
1674 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1675 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1676 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1677
1678 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1679 -----------------
1680
1681 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1682 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1683
1684 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1685 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1686 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1687 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1688 documented the name....
1689
1690 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1691 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1692 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1693
1694 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1695 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1696 directory) on certain systems.
1697
1698 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1699 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1700
1701 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1702 -----------------
1703
1704 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1705 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1706 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1707 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1708 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1709 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1710 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1711 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1712 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1713 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1714 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1715 to me.
1716
1717 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1718 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1719 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1720 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1721 simultaneously.)
1722
1723 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1724 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1725
1726 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1727 image.
1728
1729 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1730 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1731 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1732 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1733 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1734
1735 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1736 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1737 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1738 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1739 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1740 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1741
1742 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1743 ------------------
1744
1745 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1746 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1747 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1748 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1749 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1750 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1751 small sample of computers.
1752
1753 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1754 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1755 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1756 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1757 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1758
1759 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1760
1761 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1762 ------------------
1763
1764 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1765 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1766 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1767 versionless initrd file.
1768
1769 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1770 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1771 continues.
1772
1773 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1774 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1775 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1776
1777 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1778 ------------------
1779
1780 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1781 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1782 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1783 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1784
1785 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1786 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1787 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1788 directory as the kernel.
1789
1790 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1791 entries in refind.conf file.
1792
1793 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1794 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1795
1796
1797 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1798 ------------------
1799
1800 - Initial public release