]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - NEWS.txt
Further refinement to spoof_osx_version feature, including HTML
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.9.3 (??/??/2015):
2 -------------------
3
4 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
5 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
6 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
7 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
8 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
9 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
10 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
11
12 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
13 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
14 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
15 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
16 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
17 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
18 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
19 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
20 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
21 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
22 workaround.)
23
24 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
25 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
26 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
27 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
28 boot.
29
30 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
31 ------------------
32
33 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
34 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
35 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
36 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
37 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
38 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
39 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
40 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
41 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
42 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
43 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
44
45 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
46 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
47 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
48 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
49 Secure Boot db list.
50
51 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
52 ------------------
53
54 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
55 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
56 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
57 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
58 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
59 or "ro" option to the kernel.
60 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
61 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
62 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
63 system has more than one with the correct type code.
64
65 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
66 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
67 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
68 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
69 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
70 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
71 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
72 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
73 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
74
75 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
76 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
77 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
78 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
79
80 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
81
82 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
83 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
84 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
85 closely-related distributions.
86
87 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
88 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
89 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
90 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
91 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
92 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
93 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
94 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
95 potentially buggy system calls.
96
97 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
98 ------------------
99
100 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
101
102 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
103 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
104 EDK2.)
105
106 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
107 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
108 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
109 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
110 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
111 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
112 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
113 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
114
115 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
116 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
117 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
118 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
119 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
120 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
121 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
122 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
123 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
124
125 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
126 file was encountered.
127
128 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
129 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
130 under OS X.
131
132 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
133 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
134 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
135
136 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
137 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
138 IA32.
139
140 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
141 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
142 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
143 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
144 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
145 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
146
147 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
148 -----------------
149
150 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
151 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
152 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
153
154 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
155
156 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
157 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
158 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
159
160 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
161 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
162
163 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
164 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
165 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
166 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
167 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
168 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
169
170 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
171 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
172 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
173 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
174 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
175
176 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
177 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
178 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
179 such as the ASUS T100.)
180
181 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
182 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
183 of the efitools package.
184
185 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
186
187 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
188
189 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
190 itself.
191
192 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
193 -----------------
194
195 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
196 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
197 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
198
199 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
200 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
201 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
202 used universally.
203
204 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
205 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
206 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
207 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
208
209 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
210 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
211 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
212
213 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
214 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
215
216 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
217 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
218
219 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
220 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
221 selection images to fail to load.
222
223 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
224 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
225
226 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
227 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
228
229
230 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
231 -----------------
232
233 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
234
235 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
236
237 - Changes to
238
239 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
240
241 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
242 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
243 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
244 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
245 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
246 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
247 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
248 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
249
250 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
251
252 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
253 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
254 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
255 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
256 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
257
258 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
259 from other than the first hard disk.
260
261
262 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
263 ------------------
264
265 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
266 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
267 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
268
269 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
270
271 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
272 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
273 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
274 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
275
276 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
277 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
278 mode.
279
280 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
281 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
282 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
283 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
284
285 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
286 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
287 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
288
289 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
290 building and basic use instructions).
291
292 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
293 -----------------
294
295 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
296 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
297 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
298 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
299 is displayed.
300
301 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
302 distribution.
303
304 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
305 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
306 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
307
308 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
309 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
310 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
311 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
312 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
313 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
314 change its license to a BSD license.
315
316 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
317 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
318 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
319
320 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
321 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
322 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
323 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
324 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
325 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
326 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
327 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
328 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
329 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
330 and ensure it's set to "false".
331
332 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
333 -------------------
334
335 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
336 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
337
338 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
339 -----------------
340
341 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
342 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
343 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
344 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
345 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
346 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
347 loader in the
348 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
349 variable under Linux.
350
351 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
352
353 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
354 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
355
356 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
357 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
358
359 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
360 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
361 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
362 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
363 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
364 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
365 override a setting in the main file).
366
367 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
368 ------------------
369
370 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
371 on the root directory of a partition.
372
373 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
374 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
375
376 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
377 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
378 second.
379
380 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
381 screens.
382
383 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
384 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
385 firmware).
386
387 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
388 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
389 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
390 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
391 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
392 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
393 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
394 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
395
396 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
397 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
398 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
399 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
400 volume and is used by OS X.
401
402 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
403 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
404
405 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
406 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
407
408 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
409 -----------------
410
411 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
412 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
413 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
414 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
415 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
416
417 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
418
419 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
420 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
421 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
422 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
423
424 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
425 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
426 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
427 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
428 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
429 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
430
431 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
432 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
433 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
434
435 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
436 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
437
438 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
439 ------------------
440
441 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
442 some Macs.
443
444 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
445 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
446 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
447
448 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
449 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
450
451 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
452
453 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
454 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
455 drivers.
456
457 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
458 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
459 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
460
461 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
462 utility."
463
464
465 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
466 -----------------
467
468 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
469 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
470 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
471 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
472 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
473 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
474 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
475
476 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
477 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
478 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
479 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
480 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
481 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
482 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
483 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
484
485 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
486 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
487 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
488 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
489 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
490 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
491
492 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
493 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
494 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
495 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
496 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
497
498 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
499 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
500 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
501 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
502 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
503 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
504 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
505 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
506 problems might arise.
507
508 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
509 -----------------
510
511 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
512 dont_scan_files.
513
514 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
515
516 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
517 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
518 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
519 utility on the second row of icons.
520
521 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
522 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
523 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
524 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
525 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
526
527 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
528 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
529 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
530
531 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
532 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
533 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
534 UUID.
535
536 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
537 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
538
539 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
540 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
541 under some circumstances.
542
543 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
544 -------------------
545
546 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
547 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
548 default_selection "fred,ginger"
549 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
550 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
551
552 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
553 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
554 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
555 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
556 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
557 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
558 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
559 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
560 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
561 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
562 depending on your computer.
563
564 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
565 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
566 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
567 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
568 screensaver will be disabled.
569
570 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
571 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
572 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
573 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
574 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
575
576 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
577 -------------------
578
579 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
580 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
581
582 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
583 versions of OS X to fail.
584
585 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
586 drivers were present.
587
588 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
589 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
590 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
591 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
592 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
593 black a second or so later.
594
595 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
596 --------------------
597
598 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
599 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
600 problem.
601
602 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
603 ------------------
604
605 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
606 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
607 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
608
609 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
610 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
611 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
612 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
613 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
614 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
615 default.
616
617 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
618 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
619 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
620 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
621
622 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
623 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
624 known case, but there may be others.)
625
626 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
627 -----------------
628
629 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
630 loaders on Macs.
631
632 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
633
634 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
635 -----------------
636
637 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
638 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
639
640 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
641 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
642
643 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
644 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
645
646 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
647 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
648 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
649 HashTool-signed.efi".
650
651 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
652
653 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
654 was broken.
655
656 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
657 was broken.
658
659 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
660 -----------------
661
662 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
663
664 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
665 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
666 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
667
668 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
669 volume specification, if present.
670
671 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
672
673 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
674 ------------------
675
676 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
677 type for volumes that lack labels.
678
679 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
680 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
681 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
682 though.
683
684 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
685 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
686 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
687 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
688 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
689 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
690 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
691 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
692
693 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
694 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
695 non-EFI loaders, etc.
696
697 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
698 code.
699
700 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
701 -------------------
702
703 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
704 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
705
706 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
707 script.
708
709 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
710 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
711 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
712 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
713
714 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
715 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
716 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
717 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
718
719 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
720 -------------------
721
722 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
723 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
724 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
725 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
726
727 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
728
729 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
730 directory names that contain spaces.
731
732 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
733 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
734 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
735 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
736 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
737
738 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
739 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
740
741 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
742 Utility" in menu.
743
744 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
745 partitions to fill the MBR.
746
747 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
748 ------------------
749
750 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
751 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
752 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
753 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
754
755 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
756 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
757 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
758 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
759 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
760
761 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
762 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
763 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
764 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
765 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
766 is quietly ignored.
767
768 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
769 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
770
771 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
772 encountered when saving a screen shot.
773
774 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
775 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
776 sequence number, starting with "001".
777
778 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
779 ------------------
780
781 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
782 Kemperman.
783
784 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
785 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
786
787 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
788 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
789 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
790
791 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
792 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
793 accidentally trash their systems.
794
795 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
796 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
797 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
798
799 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
800 ------------------
801
802 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
803 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
804
805 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
806 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
807
808 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
809 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
810
811 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
812
813 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
814 -----------------
815
816 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
817 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
818
819 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
820 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
821 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
822 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
823
824 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
825 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
826
827 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
828 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
829
830 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
831 also_scan_dirs list.
832
833 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
834
835 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
836 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
837 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
838
839 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
840 ------------------
841
842 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
843 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
844 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
845 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
846 loader under the fallback name.
847
848 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
849 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
850 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
851 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
852 of 96 glyphs.
853
854 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
855 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
856
857 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
858 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
859
860 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
861 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
862 commented out or empty.
863
864 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
865 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
866
867 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
868 manual boot stanzas.
869
870 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
871 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
872
873 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
874 ------------------
875
876 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
877 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
878
879 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
880
881 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
882
883 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
884 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
885
886 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
887
888 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
889 sized to cover these areas.
890
891 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
892 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
893 resolution!
894
895 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
896 -----------------
897
898 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
899 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
900 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
901 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
902
903 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
904 startup on some systems.
905
906 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
907 -----------------
908
909 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
910 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
911
912 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
913 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
914
915 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
916 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
917 burned to USB flash disks.
918
919 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
920 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
921 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
922
923 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
924 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
925 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
926 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
927 from that installation.
928
929 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
930 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
931 than in EFI/refind.
932
933 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
934 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
935
936 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
937 -------------------
938
939 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
940 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
941 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
942
943 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
944 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
945 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
946 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
947 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
948
949 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
950 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
951 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
952 Linux with the "make" command.
953
954 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
955 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
956
957 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
958 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
959 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
960 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
961 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
962 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
963 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
964 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
965
966 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
967 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
968 default.)
969
970 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
971 -------------------
972
973 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
974 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
975 use on emergency discs.
976
977 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
978 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
979 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
980 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
981 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
982 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
983 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
984 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
985 handle.
986
987 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
988
989 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
990 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
991 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
992 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
993 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
994 os_GENTOO.icns.
995
996 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
997 mode.
998
999 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1000 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1001 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1002 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1003
1004 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1005 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1006 a boot loader launch failed.
1007
1008 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
1009 -------------------
1010
1011 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1012 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1013 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1014 options.
1015
1016 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1017 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1018 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1019 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1020
1021 - Added ext4fs driver!
1022
1023 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1024
1025 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1026
1027 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1028 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1029
1030 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1031 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1032 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1033 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1034 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1035 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1036 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1037 mode.
1038
1039 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1040 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1041 display even in graphics mode.
1042
1043 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1044 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1045
1046 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1047 disables the boot options editor.
1048
1049 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1050 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1051
1052 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1053 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1054 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1055
1056 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1057 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1058
1059 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1060 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1061 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1062 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1063 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1064 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1065
1066 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1067 on Linux systems.
1068
1069 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1070 ---------------------
1071
1072 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1073
1074 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1075 -------------------
1076
1077 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1078 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1079 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1080 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1081
1082 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1083 configuration file from a primary one.
1084
1085 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1086 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1087 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1088 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1089 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1090 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1091 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1092 LVM.)
1093
1094 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1095 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1096
1097 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1098 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1099 refind.conf.
1100
1101 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1102 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1103
1104 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1105 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1106 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1107
1108 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1109 ------------------
1110
1111 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1112 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1113 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1114 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1115 option:
1116 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1117
1118 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1119 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1120 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1121 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1122 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1123 for them makes sense.
1124
1125 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1126 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1127 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1128 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1129
1130 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1131 were not actually edited.
1132
1133 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1134 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1135 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1136 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1137 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1138
1139 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1140 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1141 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1142 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1143 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1144 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1145 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1146 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1147
1148 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1149 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1150 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1151
1152 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1153 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1154 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1155
1156 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1157 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1158 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1159 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1160
1161 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1162 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1163 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1164
1165 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1166 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1167
1168 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1169 ------------------
1170
1171 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1172
1173 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1174 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1175 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1176
1177 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1178 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1179 told isn't working as planned).
1180
1181 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1182 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1183 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1184 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1185
1186 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1187 ------------------
1188
1189 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1190
1191 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1192 for disks.
1193
1194 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1195 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1196 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1197 done this for two reasons:
1198 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1199 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1200 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1201 default for them should help them.
1202 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1203 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1204 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1205 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1206 default configurations.
1207
1208 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1209
1210 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1211 ------------------
1212
1213 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1214
1215 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1216
1217 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1218 ------------------
1219
1220 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1221 32-bit systems.
1222
1223 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1224 on 32-bit systems.
1225
1226 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1227 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1228 loaders/OSes.
1229
1230 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1231
1232 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1233 ------------------
1234
1235 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1236 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1237
1238 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1239 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1240 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1241 graphics or text mode itself.)
1242
1243 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1244 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1245 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1246 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1247 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1248 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1249 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1250
1251 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1252
1253 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1254 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1255 "linux.conf" themselves.
1256
1257 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1258 -----------------
1259
1260 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1261 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1262 via rEFInd.
1263
1264 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1265 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1266 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1267 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1268 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1269 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1270 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1271 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1272 the boot order).
1273
1274 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1275 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1276
1277 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1278 ------------------
1279
1280 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1281 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1282 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1283 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1284 system hasn't hung.
1285
1286 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1287 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1288
1289 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1290
1291 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1292 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1293 label.)
1294
1295 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1296 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1297
1298 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1299 ------------------
1300
1301 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1302 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1303 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1304 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1305 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1306 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1307 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1308
1309 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1310 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1311 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1312
1313 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1314 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1315 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1316 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1317
1318 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1319 file when launched from rEFInd.
1320
1321 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1322 ------------------
1323
1324 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1325 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1326
1327 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1328 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1329 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1330 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1331 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1332 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1333
1334 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1335 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1336
1337 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1338 -----------------
1339
1340 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1341 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1342 sample configuration file for a full description.
1343
1344 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1345 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1346 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1347 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1348 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1349
1350 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1351 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1352 target).
1353
1354 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1355 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1356
1357 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1358 -----------------
1359
1360 - Improved menu navigation:
1361 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1362 down arrows move between rows.
1363 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1364 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1365 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1366 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1367
1368 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1369 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1370 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1371
1372 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1373 -----------------
1374
1375 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1376 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1377 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1378 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1379 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1380 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1381 will fail to work.
1382
1383 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1384 mode.
1385
1386 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1387
1388 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1389 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1390 options.
1391
1392
1393 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1394 ------------------
1395
1396 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1397 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1398
1399 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1400 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1401 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1402 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1403 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1404 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1405 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1406 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1407 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1408 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1409 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1410
1411 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1412 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1413 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1414 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1415 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1416
1417 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1418 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1419
1420 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1421 ------------------
1422
1423 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1424 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1425 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1426 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1427 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1428 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1429
1430 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1431 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1432 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1433 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1434 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1435 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1436 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1437 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1438 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1439 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1440 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1441 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1442 that resets the video mode.
1443
1444 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1445 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1446 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1447 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1448 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1449 details.
1450
1451 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1452 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1453 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1454 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1455 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1456 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1457
1458 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1459 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1460 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1461
1462 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1463 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1464 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1465 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1466
1467 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1468 ------------------
1469
1470 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1471 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1472 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1473 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1474 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1475 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1476 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1477 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1478 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1479 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1480 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1481 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1482 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1483 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1484 installation.
1485
1486 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1487
1488 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1489 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1490 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1491 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1492 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1493 directories you like.
1494
1495 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1496 ------------------
1497
1498 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1499 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1500 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1501 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1502 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1503 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1504 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1505 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1506
1507 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1508 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1509 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1510
1511 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1512 -----------------
1513
1514 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1515 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1516
1517 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1518 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1519 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1520 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1521 documented the name....
1522
1523 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1524 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1525 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1526
1527 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1528 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1529 directory) on certain systems.
1530
1531 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1532 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1533
1534 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1535 -----------------
1536
1537 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1538 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1539 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1540 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1541 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1542 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1543 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1544 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1545 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1546 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1547 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1548 to me.
1549
1550 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1551 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1552 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1553 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1554 simultaneously.)
1555
1556 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1557 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1558
1559 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1560 image.
1561
1562 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1563 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1564 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1565 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1566 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1567
1568 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1569 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1570 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1571 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1572 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1573 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1574
1575 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1576 ------------------
1577
1578 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1579 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1580 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1581 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1582 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1583 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1584 small sample of computers.
1585
1586 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1587 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1588 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1589 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1590 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1591
1592 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1593
1594 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1595 ------------------
1596
1597 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1598 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1599 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1600 versionless initrd file.
1601
1602 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1603 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1604 continues.
1605
1606 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1607 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1608 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1609
1610 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1611 ------------------
1612
1613 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1614 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1615 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1616 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1617
1618 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1619 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1620 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1621 directory as the kernel.
1622
1623 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1624 entries in refind.conf file.
1625
1626 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1627 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1628
1629
1630 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1631 ------------------
1632
1633 - Initial public release