code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/todo.html

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   3   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
   4
   5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   6 <head>
   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
   8   <link href="../Styles/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
   9 </head>
  10
  11 <body>
  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  18 3/1/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.8.7</p>
  19
  20
  21 <p>This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
  22
  23 <table border="1">
  24 <tr>
  25 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
  26 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
  27 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
  28 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
  29 <td>Donate $20.00</td>
  30 <td>Donate another value</td>
  31 </tr>
  32 <tr>
  33
  34 <td>
  35 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  36 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  37 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  38 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  39 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  40 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  41 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
  42 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  43 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  44 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  45 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  46 </form>
  47 </td>
  48
  49 <td>
  50 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  51 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  52 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  53 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  54 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  55 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  56 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
  57 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  58 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  59 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  60 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  61 </form>
  62 </td>
  63
  64
  65 <td>
  66 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  67 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  68 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  69 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  70 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  71 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  72 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
  73 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  74 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  75 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  76 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  77 </form>
  78 </td>
  79
  80 <td>
  81 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  82 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  83 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  84 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  85 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  86 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  87 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
  88 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  89 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  90 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  91 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  92 </form>
  93 </td>
  94
  95 <td>
  96 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  97 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  98 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  99 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 100 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 101 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 102 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
 103 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 104 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 105 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 106 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
 107 </form>
 108 </td>
 109
 110 <td>
 111 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
 112 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
 113 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
 114 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 115 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 116 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 117 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 118 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 119 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 120 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
 121 </form>
 122 </td></tr>
 123 </table>
 124
 125 <hr />
 126
 127 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
 128
 129 <hr />
 130
 131 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
 132
 133 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
 134
 135 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
 136
 137 <ul>
 138
 139 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
 140
 141     <ul>
 142
 143     <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
 144         I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 145         unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
 146         add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
 147         bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
 148         systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
 149         try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 150
 151     <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 152         theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
 153         theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
 154         replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
 155         Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
 156         (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
 157         information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
 158         href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 159
 160     </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
 161
 162 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
 163
 164     <ul>
 165
 166     <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
 167         currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
 168         off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
 169         prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
 170         boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
 171         optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
 172         icons.</li>
 173
 174     <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
 175         or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
 176         "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
 177         like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
 178         way to test such changes.</li>
 179
 180     <li>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
 181         extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
 182         so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
 183         x86-64.</li>
 184
 185     <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
 186         purposes.</li>
 187
 188     <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
 189         use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
 190         characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
 191         monospace fonts.</li>
 192
 193     <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some
 194         form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
 195         optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
 196
 197     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 198         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 199         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 200
 201     <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
 202         information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
 203         upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
 204         transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
 205
 206     <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
 207         rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
 208         OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
 209         single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
 210         support files.</li>
 211
 212     <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
 213         icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
 214         distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
 215         BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
 216         booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
 217         probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
 218         loader files or boot sector code.</li>
 219
 220 </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 221
 222 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 223
 224     <ul>
 225
 226     <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
 227         some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
 228         user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
 229         that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
 230         a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
 231         removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
 232         remission.</li>
 233
 234     <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
 235         Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 236         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 237         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 238         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 239         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 240         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 241         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 242         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 243         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
 244         problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
 245         to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
 246         since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
 247         EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
 248         OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
 249         implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
 250         let it go.</li>
 251
 252     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
 253         PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 254         fixed.</li>
 255
 256     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 257         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 258         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 259         do it.</li>
 260
 261     <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
 262         features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
 263         but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
 264         Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
 265         causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
 266         (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
 267         unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
 268         have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
 269         receiving a patch.</li>
 270
 271     <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
 272         BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
 273         additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
 274         menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
 275         extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
 276         I haven't fully tracked it down.</li>
 277
 278     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 279         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 280         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 281
 282     <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
 283         re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
 284         nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
 285         EFI.</li>
 286
 287     <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
 288         re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
 289         have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
 290         caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
 291         shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
 292
 293     <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
 294         slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
 295         in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
 296         volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
 297         /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
 298         and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
 299
 300     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 301         similar problems.</li>
 302
 303     <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
 304         or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
 305         RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
 306         already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
 307         duplication with more filesystems.</li>
 308
 309     <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
 310         when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
 311         test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
 312         exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
 313         href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
 314         <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
 315         <a
 316         href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
 317         by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using
 318         the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
 319         cases.</li>
 320
 321     <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
 322         multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
 323         boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>
 324
 325     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 326
 327 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 328
 329     <ul>
 330
 331     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 332         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 333         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 334
 335     <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 336         whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
 337         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
 338         understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
 339         installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
 340         See <a
 341         href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
 342         forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
 343
 344     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 345         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
 346         One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
 347         stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
 348         boot loader file.</li>
 349
 350     <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
 351         detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
 352         them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>
 353
 354     <li>Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
 355         actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
 356         complete keyboards.</li>
 357
 358     <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
 359         that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
 360         via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
 361         to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
 362         disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
 363         cards.</li>
 364
 365     <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
 366         information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
 367         disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
 368         the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
 369         and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
 370
 371     <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
 372         A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
 373         requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
 374         only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
 375         as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
 376         written in C.</li>
 377
 378     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 379         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 380         change its icon.</li>
 381
 382     <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
 383         monitors would be helpful.</li>
 384
 385     <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
 386         priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
 387         written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
 388         can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
 389
 390     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 391
 392 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 393
 394     <ul>
 395
 396     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
 397         are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
 398         welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
 399         BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
 400         Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
 401         for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
 402
 403     <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
 404         to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
 405         desirable.</li>
 406
 407     <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
 408         one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
 409         <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
 410         computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
 411         This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
 412         since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
 413         that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
 414
 415     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 416
 417 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
 418     support tools:</b>
 419
 420     <ul>
 421
 422     <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
 423         under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
 424         partition table. Fix this.</li>
 425
 426     <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
 427         package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
 428         shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
 429         to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
 430         message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
 431         that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
 432         really the case.</li>
 433
 434     <li>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
 435         external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
 436         BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
 437         makes it useless on those networks.</li>
 438
 439     <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
 440
 441     </ul></li>
 442
 443 </ul>
 444
 445 <hr />
 446
 447 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2015 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 448
 449 <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>
 450
 451 <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>
 452
 453 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 454
 455 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 456
 457   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 458 </body>
 459 </html>