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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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12 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
13
14 <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
16
17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
18 5/25/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.1</p>
19
20 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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85
86 <hr />
87
88 <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>
89
90 <hr />
91
92 <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>
93
94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
95
96 <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 four different forms:</p>
97
98 <ul>
99
100 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.1/refind-src-0.4.1.zip/download">A
101 source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
102 compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
103 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
104 tools to build the main rEFInd binary, and Linux with the <a
105 href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore
106 development kit</a> for the drivers. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
107 toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
108 possible, but I've not attempted it.</li>
109
110 <li><b><a
111 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.1/refind-bin-0.4.1.zip/download">A
112 binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
113 rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
114 computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
115 optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
116 and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
117 Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
118 href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
119
120 <li><b><a
121 href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.1/refind-cd-0.4.1.zip/download">A
122 CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
123 the zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd (and its
124 filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on UEFI PCs,
125 but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then copy the
126 files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in such a
127 way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64) or
128 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
129 shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
130 so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
131 don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
132 be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
133 shell.</li>
134
135 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
136 git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
137 browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
138 and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
139 method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
140 familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
141 git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
142
143 </ul>
144
145 <p>If you're using another platform, 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>
146
147 <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>
148
149 <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>
150
151 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
152
153 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57632">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57966">git (experimental)</a> releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.</p>
154
155 <p>You can also obtain rEFInd from the <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages collection,</a> which creates packages for a number of OSes using its own packaging system.</p>
156
157 <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>
158
159 <hr />
160
161 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
162
163 <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>
164
165 <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>
166
167 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
168
169 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
170
171 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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