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

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   3   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
   4
   5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   6 <head>
   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
   8   <link href="../Styles/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
   9 </head>
  10
  11 <body>
  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  18 11/10/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.7.5</p>
  19
  20
  21 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
  22
  23 <table border="1">
  24 <tr>
  25 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
  26 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
  27 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
  28 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
  29 <td>Donate $20.00</td>
  30 <td>Donate another value</td>
  31 </tr>
  32 <tr>
  33
  34 <td>
  35 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  36 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  37 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  38 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  39 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  40 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  41 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
  42 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  43 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  44 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  45 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  46 </form>
  47 </td>
  48
  49 <td>
  50 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  51 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  52 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  53 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  54 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  55 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  56 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
  57 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  58 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  59 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  60 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  61 </form>
  62 </td>
  63
  64
  65 <td>
  66 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  67 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  68 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  69 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  70 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  71 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  72 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
  73 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  74 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  75 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  76 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  77 </form>
  78 </td>
  79
  80 <td>
  81 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  82 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  83 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  84 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  85 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  86 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  87 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
  88 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  89 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  90 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  91 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  92 </form>
  93 </td>
  94
  95 <td>
  96 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  97 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  98 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  99 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 100 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 101 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 102 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
 103 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 104 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 105 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 106 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
 107 </form>
 108 </td>
 109
 110 <td>
 111 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
 112 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
 113 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
 114 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 115 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 116 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 117 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 118 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 119 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 120 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
 121 </form>
 122 </td></tr>
 123 </table>
 124
 125 <hr />
 126
 127 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
 128
 129 <hr />
 130
 131 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
 132
 133 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
 134
 135 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
 136
 137 <ul>
 138
 139 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
 140
 141     <ul>
 142
 143     <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
 144         I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 145         unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
 146         add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
 147         bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
 148         systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
 149         try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 150
 151     <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 152         theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
 153         theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
 154         replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
 155         Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
 156         (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
 157         information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
 158         href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 159
 160     </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
 161
 162 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
 163
 164     <ul>
 165
 166     <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
 167         currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
 168         off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
 169         prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
 170         boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
 171         optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
 172         icons.</li>
 173
 174     <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
 175         or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
 176         "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
 177         like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
 178         way to test such changes.</li>
 179
 180     <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple
 181         image sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file,
 182         rEFInd can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the
 183         desired size would be useful.</li>
 184
 185     <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
 186         purposes.</li>
 187
 188     <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
 189         use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
 190         characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
 191         monospace fonts.</li>
 192
 193     <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
 194         loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
 195         from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
 196         label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</li>
 197
 198     <li>Currently, if a filesystem's label comes up empty, rEFInd
 199         substitutes the size, so you get displays like <tt>boot
 200         EFI\foo\bar.efi from 90 GiB volume</tt>. I'd like to add more
 201         checks to substitute the GPT <i>partition</i> label if the
 202         <i>filesystem</i> label comes up empty.</li>
 203
 204     <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the
 205         <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some form
 206         of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
 207         optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
 208
 209     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 210         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 211         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 212
 213     <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
 214         information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
 215         upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
 216         transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
 217
 218     </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 219
 220 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 221
 222     <ul>
 223
 224     <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
 225         some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
 226         user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
 227         that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
 228         a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
 229         removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
 230         remission.</li>
 231
 232     <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
 233         Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 234         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 235         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 236         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 237         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 238         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 239         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 240         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 241         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
 242         problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
 243         to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
 244         since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
 245         EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
 246         OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
 247         implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
 248         let it go.</li>
 249
 250     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
 251         PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 252         fixed.</li>
 253
 254     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 255         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 256         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 257         do it.</li>
 258
 259     <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
 260         features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
 261         but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
 262         Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
 263         causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
 264         (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
 265         unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
 266         have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
 267         receiving a patch.</li>
 268
 269     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 270         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 271         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 272
 273     <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
 274         re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
 275         nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
 276         EFI.</li>
 277
 278     <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
 279         re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
 280         have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
 281         caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
 282         shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
 283
 284     <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
 285         slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
 286         in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
 287         volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
 288         /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
 289         and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
 290
 291     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 292         similar problems.</li>
 293
 294     <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array, rEFInd will detect
 295         kernels or boot loaders in RAID 1 twice. This could be fixed by
 296         adding a check for duplicate filesystem UUIDs to the
 297         partition-scanning code.</li>
 298
 299     <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
 300         when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
 301         test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
 302         exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
 303         href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
 304         <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
 305         <a
 306         href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
 307         by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though.</li>
 308
 309     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 310
 311 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 312
 313     <ul>
 314
 315     <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
 316         it would.</li>
 317
 318     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 319         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 320         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 321
 322     <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 323         whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
 324         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
 325         understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
 326         installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
 327         See <a
 328         href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
 329         forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
 330
 331     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 332         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
 333         One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
 334         stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
 335         boot loader file.</li>
 336
 337     <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
 338         information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
 339         disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
 340         the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
 341         and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
 342
 343     <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
 344         A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
 345         requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
 346         only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
 347         as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
 348         written in C.</li>
 349
 350     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 351         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 352         change its icon.</li>
 353
 354     <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
 355         monitors would be helpful.</li>
 356
 357     <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
 358         priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
 359         written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
 360         can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
 361
 362     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 363
 364 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 365
 366     <ul>
 367
 368     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
 369         are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
 370         welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
 371         BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
 372         Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
 373         for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
 374
 375     <li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
 376         what the volume's real label is.</li>
 377
 378     <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
 379         to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
 380         desirable.</li>
 381
 382     <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
 383         one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
 384         <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
 385         computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
 386         This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
 387         since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
 388         that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
 389
 390     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 391
 392 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
 393     support tools:</b>
 394
 395     <ul>
 396
 397     <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
 398         under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
 399         partition table. Fix this.</li>
 400
 401     <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
 402         package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
 403         shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
 404         to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
 405         message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
 406         that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
 407         really the case.</li>
 408
 409     <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
 410
 411     </ul></li>
 412
 413 </ul>
 414
 415 <hr />
 416
 417 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 418
 419 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
 420
 421 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
 422
 423 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 424
 425 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 426
 427   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 428 </body>
 429 </html>