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