4 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
5 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
6 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
8 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
9 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
14 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
16 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
17 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
18 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
20 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
21 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
22 told isn't working as planned).
24 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
25 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
26 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
27 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
32 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
34 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
37 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
38 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
39 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
40 done this for two reasons:
41 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
42 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
43 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
44 default for them should help them.
45 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
46 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
47 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
48 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
49 default configurations.
51 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
56 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
58 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
63 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
66 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
69 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
70 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
73 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
78 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
79 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
81 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
82 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
83 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
84 graphics or text mode itself.)
86 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
87 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
88 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
89 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
90 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
91 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
92 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
94 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
96 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
97 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
98 "linux.conf" themselves.
103 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
104 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
107 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
108 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
109 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
110 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
111 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
112 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
113 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
114 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
117 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
118 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
123 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
124 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
125 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
126 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
129 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
130 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
132 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
134 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
135 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
138 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
139 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
144 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
145 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
146 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
147 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
148 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
149 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
150 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
152 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
153 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
154 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
156 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
157 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
158 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
159 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
161 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
162 file when launched from rEFInd.
167 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
168 received reports that it's not working as intended.
170 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
171 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
172 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
173 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
174 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
175 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
177 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
178 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
183 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
184 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
185 sample configuration file for a full description.
187 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
188 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
189 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
190 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
191 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
193 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
194 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
197 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
198 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
203 - Improved menu navigation:
204 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
205 down arrows move between rows.
206 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
207 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
208 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
209 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
211 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
212 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
213 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
218 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
219 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
220 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
221 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
222 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
223 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
226 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
229 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
231 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
232 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
239 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
240 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
242 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
243 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
244 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
245 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
246 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
247 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
248 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
249 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
250 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
251 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
252 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
254 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
255 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
256 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
257 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
258 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
260 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
261 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
266 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
267 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
268 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
269 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
270 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
271 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
273 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
274 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
275 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
276 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
277 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
278 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
279 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
280 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
281 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
282 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
283 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
284 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
285 that resets the video mode.
287 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
288 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
289 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
290 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
291 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
294 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
295 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
296 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
297 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
298 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
299 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
301 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
302 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
303 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
305 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
306 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
307 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
308 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
313 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
314 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
315 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
316 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
317 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
318 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
319 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
320 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
321 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
322 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
323 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
324 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
325 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
326 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
329 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
331 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
332 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
333 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
334 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
335 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
336 directories you like.
341 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
342 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
343 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
344 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
345 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
346 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
347 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
348 should work when a volume is unnamed.
350 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
351 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
352 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
357 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
358 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
360 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
361 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
362 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
363 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
364 documented the name....
366 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
367 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
368 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
370 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
371 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
372 directory) on certain systems.
374 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
375 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
380 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
381 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
382 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
383 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
384 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
385 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
386 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
387 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
388 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
389 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
390 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
393 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
394 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
395 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
396 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
399 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
400 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
402 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
405 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
406 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
407 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
408 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
409 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
411 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
412 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
413 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
414 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
415 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
416 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
421 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
422 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
423 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
424 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
425 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
426 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
427 small sample of computers.
429 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
430 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
431 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
432 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
433 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
435 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
440 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
441 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
442 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
443 versionless initrd file.
445 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
446 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
449 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
450 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
451 than this, but such systems are very rare.
456 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
457 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
458 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
459 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
461 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
462 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
463 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
464 directory as the kernel.
466 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
467 entries in refind.conf file.
469 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
470 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
476 - Initial public release