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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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14 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
15
16 <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
17 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
18
19 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
20 9/19/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.9.2</p>
21
22 <p>This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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67 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
68 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
69 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
70 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
71 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
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82 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
83 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
84 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
85 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
86 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
87 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
88 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
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95
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97 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
98 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
99 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
100 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
101 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
102 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
103 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
104 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
105 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
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107 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
108 </form>
109 </td>
110
111 <td>
112 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
113 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
114 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
115 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
116 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
117 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
118 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
119 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
120 <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!">
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125
126 <hr />
127
128 <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>
129
130 <hr />
131
132 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>beta-quality software!</i> I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every few days. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
133
134 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
135
136 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:</p>
137
138 <ul>
139
140 <li><b><a
141 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-bin-0.9.2.zip/download">A
142 binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
143 rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
144 computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
145 optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
146 and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
147 Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
148 href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page. Some users of Arch
149 Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
150 with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a <a
151 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.9.2.zip/download">variant
152 package</a> exists in which the <i>x</i>86-64 binary was compiled with
153 GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
154 users with this problem.</li>
155
156 <li><b><a
157 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-0.9.2-1.x86_64.rpm/download">A
158 binary RPM file</a></b>&mdash;If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64
159 Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
160 package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
161 equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the
162 <tt>refind-install</tt> script (described on the <a
163 href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page) as part of the
164 installation process. Distribution maintainers can examine the
165 <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source package and tweak it to their
166 needs. The <a
167 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-0.9.2-1.src.rpm/download">source
168 RPM file</a> might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
169 on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
170 files.</li>
171
172 <li><b><a
173 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind_0.9.2-1_amd64.deb/download">A
174 binary Debian package</a></b>&mdash;If you use an <i>x</i>86-64 version
175 of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
176 install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
177 package using <tt>alien</tt>. Note that an <a href="#ppa">Ubuntu
178 PPA</a> is available, which may install more smoothly and will cause
179 rEFInd to automatically update with other packages.</li>
180
181 <p class="sidebar"><b>Note:</b> At the moment, neither the bootable CD-R image file nor the bootable USB flash drive image file supports booting with Secure Boot active. The x86-64 version of the <a href="http://en.altlinux.org/Rescue">ALT Linux Rescue disc</a> uses a Secure Boot-enabled rEFInd, though, so you may find that useful in some situations.</p>
182
183 <li><b><a
184 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-cd-0.9.2.zip/download">A
185 CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
186 the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
187 (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
188 UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
189 copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
190 such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
191 or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
192 shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
193 so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
194 don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
195 be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
196 shell.</li>
197
198 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want to make your own bootable USB
199 flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB
200 flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the
201 <tt>refind-install</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps
202 the <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash
203 refind-install --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the
204 first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a
205 BIOS-booted computer.</p>
206
207 <li><b><a
208 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-flashdrive-0.9.2.zip/download">A
209 USB flash drive image file</a></b>&mdash;Although you can create
210 your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
211 this version and copy it to your USB drive with <tt>dd</tt> or some
212 other low-level disk copying utility.</li>
213
214 <li><b><a
215 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.2/refind-src-0.9.2.zip/download">A
216 source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to compile
217 the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
218 href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
219 Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary packages (above),
220 although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
221 development tools are also supported.</li>
222
223 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
224 git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
225 browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
226 and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
227 method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
228 familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
229 git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
230
231 </ul>
232
233 <p>If you're using a platform other than <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
234
235 <p>To extract the files from the zip file images I've provided, you'll need a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
236
237 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
238
239 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
240
241 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
242
243 <ul>
244
245 <li><a name="ppa"><b>Ubuntu</b></a>&mdash;Although an official Ubuntu
246 package isn't available, I've created a <a
247 href="https://launchpad.net/~rodsmith/+archive/refind">rEFInd PPA</a>
248 for Ubuntu. To use it, open a Terminal window and type <tt
249 class="userinput">sudo apt-add-repository ppa:rodsmith/refind</tt>,
250 then <tt class="userinput">sudo apt-get update</tt>. You can then type
251 <tt class="userinput">sudo apt-get install refind</tt> to install the
252 package. Thereafter, the rEFInd version will update along with your
253 other software. This package is built with GNU-EFI and is not signed
254 with a Secure Boot key; however, the install script (which launches
255 automatically when you install the package) should sign the binary with
256 a locally-generated key if it detects that your system uses Secure
257 Boot. Thus, if you've previously installed one of my binaries on a
258 Secure Boot system and added its key as a MOK, you'll have to add your
259 local key when you reboot.</li>
260
261 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
262 repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
263 installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
264 rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
265 name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
266 pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
267 poorly tested or undocumented.</li>
268
269 <li><b>ALT Linux</b>&mdash;This RPM-based distribution is experimenting
270 with using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT
271 developers haven't yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a
272 tricky and delicate task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image),
273 but they're working on the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see <a
274 href="http://packages.altlinux.org/en/Sisyphus/srpms/refind">this
275 page</a> for details.</li>
276
277 <li><b>Slackware</b>&mdash;As far as I know, an official rEFInd package is
278 not available as part of Slackware; however, a <a
279 href="http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.1/system/refind/?search=refind">Slackware
280 package from SlackBuilds</a> is available.</li>
281
282 <li><b><a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/">Fat
283 Dog</a></b>&mdash;This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
284 rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
285 provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.</li>
286
287 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
288 collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
289 OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
290
291 </ul>
292
293 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
294
295 <hr />
296
297 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2015 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
298
299 <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>
300
301 <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>
302
303 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
304
305 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
306
307 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
308 </body>
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