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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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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 4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9</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>
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81 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
82 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
83 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
84 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
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99 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
100 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
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105 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
106 </form>
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108
109 <td>
110 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
111 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
112 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
113 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
114 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
115 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
116 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
117 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
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123
124 <hr />
125
126 <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>
127
128 <hr />
129
130 <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>
131
132 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
133
134 <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 several different forms:</p>
135
136 <ul>
137
138 <li><b><a
139 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-src-0.6.9.zip/download">A
140 source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to compile
141 the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
142 href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
143 Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary packages (below),
144 although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
145 development tools are also supported.</li>
146
147 <li><b><a
148 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-bin-0.6.9.zip/download">A
149 binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
150 rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
151 computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
152 optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
153 and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
154 Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
155 href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page. Some users of Arch
156 Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
157 with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a <a
158 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.6.9.zip/download">variant
159 package</a> exists in which the <i>x</i>86-64 binary was compiled with
160 GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
161 users with this problem; but using GNU-EFI also means that this version
162 can't launch BIOS-mode OSes.</li>
163
164 <li><b><a
165 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-0.6.9-1.x86_64.rpm/download">A
166 binary RPM file</a></b>&mdash;If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64
167 Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
168 package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
169 equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the <tt>install.sh</tt>
170 script (described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing
171 rEFInd</a> page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
172 maintainers can examine the <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source
173 package and tweak it to their needs. The <a
174 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-0.6.9-1.src.rpm/download">source
175 RPM file</a> might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
176 on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
177 files.</li>
178
179 <li><b><a
180 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind_0.6.9-1_amd64.deb/download">A
181 binary Debian package</a></b>&mdash;If you use an <i>x</i>86-64 version
182 of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
183 install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
184 package using <tt>alien</tt>.</li>
185
186 <!--
187 <li><b><a
188 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
189 binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
190 like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
191 development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
192 that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
193 develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
194 (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
195 TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
196 either build.)</li>
197 -->
198
199 <p class="sidebar"><b>Note:</b> At the moment, neither the bootable CD-R image file nor the bootable USB flash drive image file supports booting with Secure Boot active.</p>
200
201 <li><b><a
202 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-cd-0.6.9.zip/download">A
203 CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
204 the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
205 (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
206 UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
207 copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
208 such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
209 or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
210 shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
211 so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
212 don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
213 be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
214 shell.</li>
215
216 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want to make your own bootable USB
217 flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB
218 flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt>
219 program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the
220 <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh
221 --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition
222 on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted
223 computer.</p>
224
225 <li><b><a
226 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.9/refind-flashdrive-0.6.9.zip/download">A
227 USB flash drive image file</a></b>&mdash;Although you can create
228 your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
229 this version and copy it to your USB drive with <tt>dd</tt> or some
230 other low-level disk copying utility.</li>
231
232 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
233 git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
234 browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
235 and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
236 method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
237 familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
238 git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
239
240 </ul>
241
242 <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>
243
244 <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>
245
246 <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>
247
248 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
249
250 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
251
252 <ul>
253
254 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
255 repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
256 installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
257 rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
258 name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
259 pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
260 poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
261 Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
262 UEFI-based PCs.</li>
263
264 <li><b>ALT Linux</b>&mdash;This RPM-based distribution is experimenting with
265 using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT developers haven't
266 yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a tricky and delicate
267 task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image), but they're working on
268 the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see <a
269 href="http://packages.altlinux.org/en/Sisyphus/srpms/refind">this page</a>
270 for details.</li>
271
272 <li><b><a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/">Fat
273 Dog</a></b>&mdash;This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
274 rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
275 provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.</li>
276
277 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
278 collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
279 OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
280
281 <li><b>Slackware</b>&mdash;Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
282 build, <a href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this
283 site</a> has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
284 14.0.</li>
285
286 </ul>
287
288 <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>
289
290 <hr />
291
292 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
293
294 <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>
295
296 <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>
297
298 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
299
300 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
301
302 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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