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

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   3   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
   4
   5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   6 <head>
   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
   8   <link href="../Styles/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
   9 </head>
  10
  11 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  12
  13 <body>
  14   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of 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 4/24/2016, referencing rEFInd 0.10.3</p>
  21
  22
  23 <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>
  24
  25 <table border="1">
  26 <tr>
  27 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
  28 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
  29 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
  30 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
  31 <td>Donate $20.00</td>
  32 <td>Donate another value</td>
  33 </tr>
  34 <tr>
  35
  36 <td>
  37 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  38 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  39 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  40 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  41 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  42 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  43 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
  44 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  45 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  46 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  47 </form>
  48 </td>
  49
  50 <td>
  51 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  52 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  53 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  54 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  55 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  56 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  57 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
  58 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  59 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  60 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  61 </form>
  62 </td>
  63
  64
  65 <td>
  66 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  67 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  68 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  69 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  70 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  71 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  72 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
  73 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  74 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  75 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  76 </form>
  77 </td>
  78
  79 <td>
  80 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  81 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  82 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  83 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  84 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  85 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  86 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
  87 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  88 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  89 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  90 </form>
  91 </td>
  92
  93 <td>
  94 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  95 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  96 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  97 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  98 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  99 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 100 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="20.00">
 101 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 102 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 103 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 104 </form>
 105 </td>
 106
 107 <td>
 108 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
 109 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
 110 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
 111 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
 112 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
 113 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
 114 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
 115 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
 116 <input type="image" src="donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
 117 </form>
 118 </td></tr>
 119 </table>
 120
 121 <hr />
 122
 123 <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>
 124
 125 <hr />
 126
 127 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
 128
 129 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
 130
 131 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
 132
 133 <ul>
 134
 135 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
 136
 137     <ul>
 138
 139     <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
 140         I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 141         unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
 142         add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
 143         bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
 144         systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
 145         try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 146
 147     <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 148         theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
 149         theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
 150         replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
 151         Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
 152         (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
 153         information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
 154         href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 155
 156     </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
 157
 158 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
 159
 160     <ul>
 161
 162     <li>As described in reference to version 0.9.2 on the <a
 163         href="revisions.html">Revisions</a> page, rEFInd includes a
 164         delicate and hackish workaround to a problem introduced by Shim
 165         0.8. Developing a better solution to that problem is a high
 166         priority.</li>
 167
 168     <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
 169         currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
 170         off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
 171         prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
 172         boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
 173         optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
 174         icons.</li>
 175
 176     <li>rEFInd's <tt>Makefile</tt>s and, to a lesser extent, C code,
 177         support <i>x</i>86, <i>x</i>86-64, and ARM64 CPUs. EFI is also
 178         available for Itanium (IA-64) and ARM32 CPUs, so I'd like to add
 179         this support.</li>
 180
 181     <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86,
 182         <i>x</i>86-64, or ARM64 systems and displays this information in
 183         its "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
 184         like to add detection for Itanium and 32-bit ARM systems, but I
 185         have no way to test such changes.</li>
 186
 187     <li>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
 188         extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
 189         so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
 190         x86-64.</li>
 191
 192     <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
 193         purposes.</li>
 194
 195     <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
 196         use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
 197         characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
 198         monospace fonts.</li>
 199
 200     <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some
 201         form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
 202         optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
 203
 204     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 205         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 206         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 207
 208     <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
 209         information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
 210         upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
 211         transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
 212
 213     <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
 214         rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
 215         OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
 216         single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
 217         support files.</li>
 218
 219     <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
 220         icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
 221         distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
 222         BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
 223         booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
 224         probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
 225         loader files or boot sector code.</li>
 226
 227 </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 228
 229 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 230
 231     <ul>
 232
 233     <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
 234         some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
 235         user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
 236         that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
 237         a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
 238         removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
 239         remission.</li>
 240
 241     <li>Another Mac-specific display problem relates to "retina" displays:
 242         Some users report that rEFInd comes up in a lower resolution than
 243         the screen supports, and that this setting persists into the running
 244         OS X instance, and can't be adjusted using the usual OS X means.
 245         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware necessary to experiment and find
 246         a solution to this problem within rEFInd. Thus, a fix will have to
 247         wait for me to get my hands on such hardware (which is not on my
 248         immediate purchase list) or until somebody with such hardware and
 249         the necessary skills submits a fix. (Note that a fix could
 250         conceivably involve passing options to the OS X boot loader or
 251         something else that would require trivial or no changes to
 252         rEFInd.)</li>
 253
 254     <li>Some EFIs have bugs that cause the allegedly case-insensitive
 255         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 256         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 257         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 258         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 259         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 260         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 261         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 262         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). This problem is
 263         worse when compiling rEFInd with GNU-EFI than with Tianocore.
 264         Version 0.9.1 has made improvements on this score, but some issues
 265         may continue to lurk.</li>
 266
 267     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
 268         PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 269         fixed.</li>
 270
 271     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 272         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 273         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 274         do it.</li>
 275
 276     <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
 277         features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
 278         but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
 279         Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
 280         causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
 281         (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
 282         unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
 283         have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
 284         receiving a patch.</li>
 285
 286     <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
 287         BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
 288         additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
 289         menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
 290         extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
 291         I haven't fully tracked it down.</li>
 292
 293     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 294         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 295         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 296
 297     <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
 298         re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
 299         nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
 300         EFI.</li>
 301
 302     <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
 303         re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
 304         have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
 305         caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
 306         shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
 307
 308     <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
 309         slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
 310         in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
 311         volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
 312         /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
 313         and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
 314
 315     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 316         similar problems.</li>
 317
 318     <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
 319         or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
 320         RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
 321         already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
 322         duplication with more filesystems.</li>
 323
 324     <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
 325         when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
 326         test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
 327         exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
 328         href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
 329         <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
 330         <a
 331         href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
 332         by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using
 333         the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
 334         cases.</li>
 335
 336     <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
 337         multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
 338         boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>
 339
 340     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 341
 342 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 343
 344     <ul>
 345
 346     <li>Currently, debugging rEFInd requires adding <tt>Print()</tt>
 347         statements to the code. Adding a logging facility that supports
 348         multiple log levels and writes the output to a file would help with
 349         debugging, especially when dealing with problem reports from
 350         users.</li>
 351
 352     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 353         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 354         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 355
 356     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 357         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
 358         One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
 359         stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
 360         boot loader file.</li>
 361
 362     <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
 363         detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
 364         them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>
 365
 366     <li>Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
 367         actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
 368         complete keyboards.</li>
 369
 370     <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
 371         monitors or who use tablets would be helpful.</li>
 372
 373     <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
 374         that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
 375         via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
 376         to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
 377         disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
 378         cards.</li>
 379
 380     <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
 381         information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
 382         disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
 383         the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
 384         and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
 385
 386     <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
 387         A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
 388         requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
 389         only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
 390         as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
 391         written in C.</li>
 392
 393     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 394         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 395         change its icon.</li>
 396
 397     <li>A GUI configuration tool for host OSes (Linux, OS X, Windows, etc.)
 398         would be nice, but it's low on my personal priority list. If you'd
 399         like to contribute, I prefer something written in a cross-platform
 400         GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
 401         major OSes.</li>
 402
 403     <li>The ability to produce audio output (at least a simple "beep") to signal
 404         to visually impaired users when rEFInd is ready to accept input would be
 405         helpful.</li>
 406
 407     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 408
 409 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 410
 411     <ul>
 412
 413     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
 414         are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
 415         welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
 416         BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
 417         Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
 418         for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
 419
 420     <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
 421         to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
 422         desirable.</li>
 423
 424     <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
 425         one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
 426         <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
 427         computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
 428         This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
 429         since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
 430         that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
 431
 432     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 433
 434 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>refind-install</tt>, or other
 435     support tools:</b>
 436
 437     <ul>
 438
 439     <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
 440         under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
 441         partition table. Fix this.</li>
 442
 443     <li>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
 444         external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
 445         BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
 446         makes it useless on those networks.</li>
 447
 448     <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
 449
 450     </ul></li>
 451
 452 </ul>
 453
 454 <hr />
 455
 456 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2016 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 457
 458 <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>
 459
 460 <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>
 461
 462 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 463
 464 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 465
 466   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 467 </body>
 468 </html>