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Fixed NTFS driver bug that could cause system hangs.
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.10.3 (?/??/2016):
2 -------------------
3
4 - Fixed bug in NTFS driver that caused it to hang (and thus hang the
5 computer) in some situations, particularly when a file on an NTFS volume
6 had many fragments and when the computer's CSM was activated. (Fix
7 courtesy of "S L.")
8
9 - Modified SIP/CSR rotation code: If the csr-active-config EFI variable is
10 missing AND the firmware is Apple (as identified by the string "Apple"
11 being present in the ST->FirmwareVendor string), rEFInd treats the
12 computer as one on which SIP is available and set to the "enabled" state
13 (0x10). The upshot is that the SIP/CSR tool will appear if the showtools
14 and csr_values options are set appropriately in refind.conf, even if the
15 csr-active-config variable is missing from the NVRAM. The point of this
16 change is that I've received reports of some Macs that run OS X 10.11 but
17 that lack this variable. OS X acts as if SIP were enabled, but rEFInd is
18 then unable to disable SIP. This change gives rEFInd the ability to
19 disable SIP on such systems. The drawback is that the variable might be
20 set on some systems that don't run OS X 10.11. This should be harmless
21 from a technical point of view, but the presence of SIP indicators in
22 rEFInd could be confusing.
23
24 - Added refind-mkdefault script to simplify resetting rEFInd as the default
25 boot program in Linux. The intent is to run this after GRUB, Windows, OS
26 X, or some other tool takes over as the primary boot manager. It can be
27 called from a startup script to handle this task automatically.
28
29 0.10.2 (1/26/2016):
30 -------------------
31
32 - Fixed bug in refind-install that caused mountesp to be installed as a FILE
33 called /usr/local/bin on OS X if the /usr/local/bin directory did not
34 already exist.
35
36 - Fixed bug in mvrefind that caused it to fail to move bootmgfw.efi in
37 some situations, and another that caused it to give the resulting NVRAM
38 entry the default rEFInd name of "rEFInd Boot Manager," rather than the
39 intended "Windows Boot Manager" (to work around bugs in some EFIs).
40
41 - Worked around bug/quirk in some EFIs (in HP ProBook 6470b laptop, at
42 least) that prevented EFI filesystem drivers from working. (Drivers would
43 load but not provide access to filesystems.)
44
45 - Fixed refind-install bug that caused --usedefault option to not work in OS
46 X. (This bug did not affect Linux.)
47
48 - Improved Secure Boot detection in refind-install in Linux.
49
50 - Fixed bug that caused custom volume badges (vol_*.png) to be read only
51 from default location ("icons" subdirectory), effectively eliminating the
52 ability to adjust them.
53
54 - Added centos.crt and centos.cer public key files.
55
56 0.10.1 (12/12/2015):
57 --------------------
58
59 - Change to PPA version: Installing the PPA now queries the user about
60 whether to install to the ESP. Upgrades will remember the initial
61 selection.
62
63 - Modified time-based sorting of loaders in a single directory to push
64 anything starting with "vmlinuz-0-rescue" to the end of the list. Fedora
65 gives its rescue kernels filenames that begin with that string, and if
66 such a kernel happens to be the most recent, treating it normally will
67 cause it to become the default when kernel folding is in use. This is
68 almost certainly undesirable, so this change keeps the rescue kernel at
69 the end of the list instead, which is saner.
70
71 - Significantly reworked the project's Makefiles. This should have no
72 impact on ordinary users, and even most developers should barely notice
73 it; but it should make future extensions to additional platforms or
74 building in different environments easier.
75
76 - Added workaround to gptsync for issue with some Macs' EFIs that caused
77 the program to skip through all prompts, thus accepting the default
78 option. This would normally cause gptsync to do nothing.
79
80 - Added type code 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage,
81 gdisk type AF05) to list of partition types recognized by gptsync.
82
83 - Removed Luxi Sans Mono font, since I discovered it was not open source;
84 and changed the default font from Nimbus Mono to Liberation Mono.
85
86 - Added support for compiling rEFInd for ARM64 (aka AARCH64 or aa64). This
87 works with both GNU-EFI and Tianocore UDK2014.SP1.P1. This support is
88 currently poorly tested. In particular, I used QEMU on an x86-64 computer
89 to create a virtualized ARM64 environment; I've not yet tested on a real
90 computer. I couldn't get QEMU to create a video card, so I used a serial
91 terminal, which means that the graphics features are untested -- I ran
92 rEFInd with "textonly" uncommented in refind.conf. I've tested the ext4fs
93 driver but no other drivers, although they all compile. (So does gptsync,
94 although it's unlikely to be useful on ARM64.) Some rEFInd features are
95 meaningless on ARM64, such as BIOS-mode boot support, anything geared
96 toward Macs (csr_values/csr_rotate, spoof_osx_version, etc.), and
97 enable_and_lock_vmx.
98
99 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan EFI boot loaders on
100 removable media when rEFInd itself was launched from the fallback
101 filename.
102
103 - Moved detailed descriptions of refind-install from installing.html to
104 a refind-install man page. To keep this information Web-accessible, I've
105 also created HTML versions of the three man pages and linked them into
106 the HTML documentation.
107
108 - Updated LodePNG to latest version (20151024).
109
110 - Fixed bugs in mkrlconf and in refind-install that could cause some kernel
111 options to be excluded from refind_linux.conf. There were two trouble
112 conditions:
113 - Previously, these scripts assumed that the first option in
114 /proc/cmdline was the kernel's filename, but this isn't always the
115 case. (In particular, when gummiboot launches the kernel, this is not
116 true. It might be an incorrect assumption in some other cases, too.)
117 The fix involves checking for likely signs of a kernel filename before
118 discarding this first option.
119 - These scripts cut the "initrd=*" option from /proc/cmdline, but the
120 call to "sed" was overzealous and cut until the end of input. This
121 usually worked, since the initrd= option was usually last on the line;
122 but if it wasn't, any options following initrd= would be lost.
123
124 - Added "kernel*" as a matching pattern for Linux kernels, since this is
125 what Gentoo uses by default.
126
127 - The refind-install script can now be run as a symbolic link in Linux.
128 This enables creating a /usr/sbin/refind-install link in Linux packages,
129 with the binaries stashed wherever the package system likes them. This
130 feature does NOT work in OS X, but there's relatively little need for it
131 there.
132
133 0.10.0 (11/8/2015):
134 -------------------
135
136 - Fixed bug that caused refind-install to not unmount the ESP when it
137 should under OS X.
138
139 - Modified refind-install and mkrlconf scripts to use /proc/cmdline as
140 source for default boot options EXCEPT when refind-install receives the
141 --root option. In that case, refind-install continues to use
142 /etc/default/grub as the source of default options. The idea behind this
143 change is that it's more reliable to get boot options from /proc/cmdline
144 when the targeted system is the one that's booted; but --root would be
145 used from emergency disks or live CDs, in which case the current boot
146 options would be completely wrong, so extracting boot options from GRUB
147 files is the best bet for getting close to the right options.
148
149 - Added "@/boot" to default also_scan_dirs setting. This makes kernels
150 show up on Btrfs volumes under Ubuntu (and perhaps others), at least when
151 the Btrfs driver is loaded.
152
153 - Added new System Integrity Protection (SIP) rotation feature for Macs
154 running OS X 10.11 or later. This feature is disabled by default, except
155 on CD-R and USB flash drive images, on which it's enabled. To enable it,
156 you must make TWO changes to refind.conf: Uncomment the new "csr_values"
157 item and add "csr_rotate" to the "showtools" line (uncommenting it, too,
158 if it's commented out). If desired, you can set more values on
159 "csr_values"; these are comma-delimited one-byte hexadecimal values that
160 define various SIP states. When SIP/CSR rotation is activated, a new
161 shield icon appears among the tools. Selecting it causes the next defined
162 value to be set and a confirmation message to appear for three seconds.
163
164 - Added display of current System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode to
165 "About" display.
166
167 - Added mountesp script for OS X to (you guessed it!) mount the ESP.
168
169 - Renamed support scripts: install.sh to refind-install, mvrefind.sh to
170 mvrefind, and mkrlconf.sh to mkrlconf.
171
172 - New icons! The old ones were getting to be a jumbled mess of styles,
173 particularly for OS tags. I used the AwOken icon set
174 (http://alecive.deviantart.com/art/AwOken-163570862) for the core icons,
175 then expanded from there by creating my own icons and modifying icons for
176 Debian and Elementary OS. I'm also trying to keep better track of
177 copyrights and licenses on icons. Between that and some icons being for
178 OSes that probably see very little use (FreeDOS and eComstation, for
179 instance), a few OS icons have been lost. If you prefer the old icons,
180 you can continue to use them by upgrading rEFInd, renaming icons-backup
181 to something else (say, icons-classic), and then adding an "icons" line
182 in refind.conf to point to the old icons directory.
183
184 - Changed from .zip to .tar.gz as source code archive format. I did this
185 because Linux is the only officially-supported build platform, and
186 tarballs are a more natural fit to a Linux environment. I'm leaving .zip,
187 .deb, and .rpm files as the formats for binary packages.
188
189 - Added detection of System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless") mode
190 to OS X portion of install.sh script. When detected, and if no existing
191 rEFInd installation is found, the script now prints a warning and brief
192 instructions of how to enter the Recovery mode to install rEFInd and
193 suggests aborting the installation. (The user can override and attempt
194 installation anyhow.) If SIP is detected along with an existing rEFInd
195 installation, the script moderates the warning and explains that an
196 update of a working rEFInd will probably succeed, but that re-installing
197 to fix a broken rEFInd will probably fail.
198
199 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
200 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
201 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
202 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
203 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
204 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
205 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
206
207 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
208 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
209 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
210 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
211 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
212 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
213 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
214 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
215 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
216 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
217 workaround.)
218
219 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
220 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
221 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
222 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
223 boot.
224
225 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
226 ------------------
227
228 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
229 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
230 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
231 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
232 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
233 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
234 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
235 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
236 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
237 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
238 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
239
240 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
241 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
242 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
243 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
244 Secure Boot db list.
245
246 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
247 ------------------
248
249 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
250 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
251 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
252 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
253 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
254 or "ro" option to the kernel.
255 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
256 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
257 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
258 system has more than one with the correct type code.
259
260 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
261 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
262 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
263 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
264 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
265 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
266 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
267 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
268 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
269
270 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
271 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
272 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
273 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
274
275 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
276
277 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
278 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
279 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
280 closely-related distributions.
281
282 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
283 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
284 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
285 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
286 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
287 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
288 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
289 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
290 potentially buggy system calls.
291
292 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
293 ------------------
294
295 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
296
297 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
298 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
299 EDK2.)
300
301 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
302 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
303 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
304 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
305 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
306 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
307 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
308 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
309
310 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
311 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
312 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
313 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
314 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
315 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
316 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
317 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
318 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
319
320 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
321 file was encountered.
322
323 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
324 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
325 under OS X.
326
327 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
328 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
329 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
330
331 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
332 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
333 IA32.
334
335 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
336 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
337 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
338 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
339 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
340 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
341
342 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
343 -----------------
344
345 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
346 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
347 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
348
349 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
350
351 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
352 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
353 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
354
355 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
356 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
357
358 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
359 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
360 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
361 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
362 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
363 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
364
365 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
366 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
367 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
368 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
369 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
370
371 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
372 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
373 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
374 such as the ASUS T100.)
375
376 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
377 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
378 of the efitools package.
379
380 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
381
382 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
383
384 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
385 itself.
386
387 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
388 -----------------
389
390 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
391 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
392 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
393
394 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
395 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
396 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
397 used universally.
398
399 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
400 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
401 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
402 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
403
404 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
405 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
406 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
407
408 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
409 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
410
411 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
412 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
413
414 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
415 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
416 selection images to fail to load.
417
418 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
419 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
420
421 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
422 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
423
424
425 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
426 -----------------
427
428 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
429
430 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
431
432 - Changes to
433
434 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
435
436 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
437 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
438 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
439 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
440 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
441 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
442 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
443 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
444
445 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
446
447 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
448 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
449 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
450 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
451 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
452
453 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
454 from other than the first hard disk.
455
456
457 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
458 ------------------
459
460 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
461 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
462 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
463
464 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
465
466 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
467 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
468 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
469 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
470
471 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
472 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
473 mode.
474
475 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
476 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
477 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
478 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
479
480 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
481 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
482 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
483
484 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
485 building and basic use instructions).
486
487 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
488 -----------------
489
490 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
491 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
492 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
493 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
494 is displayed.
495
496 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
497 distribution.
498
499 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
500 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
501 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
502
503 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
504 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
505 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
506 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
507 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
508 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
509 change its license to a BSD license.
510
511 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
512 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
513 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
514
515 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
516 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
517 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
518 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
519 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
520 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
521 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
522 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
523 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
524 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
525 and ensure it's set to "false".
526
527 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
528 -------------------
529
530 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
531 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
532
533 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
534 -----------------
535
536 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
537 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
538 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
539 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
540 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
541 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
542 loader in the
543 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
544 variable under Linux.
545
546 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
547
548 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
549 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
550
551 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
552 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
553
554 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
555 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
556 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
557 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
558 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
559 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
560 override a setting in the main file).
561
562 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
563 ------------------
564
565 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
566 on the root directory of a partition.
567
568 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
569 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
570
571 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
572 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
573 second.
574
575 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
576 screens.
577
578 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
579 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
580 firmware).
581
582 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
583 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
584 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
585 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
586 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
587 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
588 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
589 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
590
591 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
592 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
593 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
594 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
595 volume and is used by OS X.
596
597 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
598 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
599
600 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
601 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
602
603 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
604 -----------------
605
606 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
607 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
608 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
609 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
610 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
611
612 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
613
614 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
615 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
616 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
617 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
618
619 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
620 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
621 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
622 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
623 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
624 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
625
626 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
627 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
628 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
629
630 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
631 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
632
633 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
634 ------------------
635
636 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
637 some Macs.
638
639 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
640 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
641 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
642
643 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
644 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
645
646 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
647
648 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
649 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
650 drivers.
651
652 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
653 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
654 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
655
656 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
657 utility."
658
659
660 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
661 -----------------
662
663 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
664 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
665 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
666 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
667 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
668 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
669 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
670
671 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
672 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
673 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
674 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
675 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
676 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
677 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
678 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
679
680 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
681 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
682 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
683 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
684 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
685 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
686
687 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
688 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
689 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
690 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
691 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
692
693 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
694 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
695 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
696 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
697 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
698 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
699 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
700 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
701 problems might arise.
702
703 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
704 -----------------
705
706 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
707 dont_scan_files.
708
709 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
710
711 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
712 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
713 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
714 utility on the second row of icons.
715
716 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
717 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
718 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
719 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
720 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
721
722 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
723 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
724 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
725
726 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
727 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
728 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
729 UUID.
730
731 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
732 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
733
734 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
735 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
736 under some circumstances.
737
738 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
739 -------------------
740
741 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
742 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
743 default_selection "fred,ginger"
744 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
745 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
746
747 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
748 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
749 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
750 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
751 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
752 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
753 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
754 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
755 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
756 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
757 depending on your computer.
758
759 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
760 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
761 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
762 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
763 screensaver will be disabled.
764
765 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
766 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
767 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
768 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
769 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
770
771 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
772 -------------------
773
774 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
775 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
776
777 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
778 versions of OS X to fail.
779
780 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
781 drivers were present.
782
783 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
784 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
785 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
786 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
787 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
788 black a second or so later.
789
790 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
791 --------------------
792
793 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
794 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
795 problem.
796
797 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
798 ------------------
799
800 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
801 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
802 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
803
804 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
805 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
806 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
807 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
808 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
809 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
810 default.
811
812 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
813 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
814 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
815 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
816
817 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
818 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
819 known case, but there may be others.)
820
821 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
822 -----------------
823
824 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
825 loaders on Macs.
826
827 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
828
829 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
830 -----------------
831
832 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
833 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
834
835 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
836 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
837
838 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
839 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
840
841 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
842 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
843 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
844 HashTool-signed.efi".
845
846 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
847
848 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
849 was broken.
850
851 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
852 was broken.
853
854 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
855 -----------------
856
857 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
858
859 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
860 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
861 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
862
863 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
864 volume specification, if present.
865
866 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
867
868 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
869 ------------------
870
871 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
872 type for volumes that lack labels.
873
874 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
875 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
876 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
877 though.
878
879 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
880 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
881 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
882 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
883 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
884 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
885 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
886 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
887
888 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
889 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
890 non-EFI loaders, etc.
891
892 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
893 code.
894
895 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
896 -------------------
897
898 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
899 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
900
901 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
902 script.
903
904 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
905 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
906 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
907 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
908
909 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
910 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
911 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
912 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
913
914 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
915 -------------------
916
917 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
918 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
919 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
920 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
921
922 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
923
924 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
925 directory names that contain spaces.
926
927 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
928 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
929 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
930 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
931 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
932
933 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
934 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
935
936 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
937 Utility" in menu.
938
939 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
940 partitions to fill the MBR.
941
942 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
943 ------------------
944
945 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
946 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
947 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
948 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
949
950 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
951 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
952 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
953 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
954 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
955
956 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
957 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
958 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
959 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
960 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
961 is quietly ignored.
962
963 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
964 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
965
966 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
967 encountered when saving a screen shot.
968
969 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
970 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
971 sequence number, starting with "001".
972
973 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
974 ------------------
975
976 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
977 Kemperman.
978
979 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
980 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
981
982 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
983 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
984 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
985
986 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
987 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
988 accidentally trash their systems.
989
990 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
991 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
992 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
993
994 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
995 ------------------
996
997 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
998 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
999
1000 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
1001 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
1002
1003 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
1004 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
1005
1006 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
1007
1008 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
1009 -----------------
1010
1011 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
1012 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
1013
1014 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
1015 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
1016 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
1017 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
1018
1019 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
1020 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
1021
1022 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
1023 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1024
1025 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
1026 also_scan_dirs list.
1027
1028 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
1029
1030 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
1031 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
1032 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
1033
1034 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
1035 ------------------
1036
1037 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1038 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
1039 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
1040 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
1041 loader under the fallback name.
1042
1043 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
1044 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
1045 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
1046 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
1047 of 96 glyphs.
1048
1049 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
1050 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
1051
1052 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
1053 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
1054
1055 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
1056 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
1057 commented out or empty.
1058
1059 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
1060 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
1061
1062 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
1063 manual boot stanzas.
1064
1065 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
1066 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
1067
1068 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
1069 ------------------
1070
1071 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
1072 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
1073
1074 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
1075
1076 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
1077
1078 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
1079 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
1080
1081 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
1082
1083 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
1084 sized to cover these areas.
1085
1086 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
1087 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
1088 resolution!
1089
1090 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
1091 -----------------
1092
1093 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
1094 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
1095 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
1096 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
1097
1098 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
1099 startup on some systems.
1100
1101 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
1102 -----------------
1103
1104 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
1105 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
1106
1107 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
1108 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
1109
1110 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
1111 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
1112 burned to USB flash disks.
1113
1114 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
1115 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
1116 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
1117
1118 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1119 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
1120 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
1121 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
1122 from that installation.
1123
1124 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
1125 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
1126 than in EFI/refind.
1127
1128 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
1129 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
1130
1131 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
1132 -------------------
1133
1134 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
1135 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
1136 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
1137
1138 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
1139 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
1140 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
1141 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
1142 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
1143
1144 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
1145 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
1146 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
1147 Linux with the "make" command.
1148
1149 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
1150 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
1151
1152 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
1153 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
1154 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
1155 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
1156 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
1157 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
1158 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
1159 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
1160
1161 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
1162 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
1163 default.)
1164
1165 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
1166 -------------------
1167
1168 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
1169 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
1170 use on emergency discs.
1171
1172 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
1173 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
1174 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
1175 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
1176 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
1177 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
1178 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
1179 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
1180 handle.
1181
1182 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
1183
1184 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
1185 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
1186 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
1187 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
1188 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
1189 os_GENTOO.icns.
1190
1191 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
1192 mode.
1193
1194 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1195 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1196 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1197 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1198
1199 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1200 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1201 a boot loader launch failed.
1202
1203 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
1204 -------------------
1205
1206 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1207 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1208 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1209 options.
1210
1211 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1212 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1213 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1214 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1215
1216 - Added ext4fs driver!
1217
1218 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1219
1220 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1221
1222 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1223 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1224
1225 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1226 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1227 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1228 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1229 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1230 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1231 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1232 mode.
1233
1234 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1235 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1236 display even in graphics mode.
1237
1238 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1239 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1240
1241 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1242 disables the boot options editor.
1243
1244 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1245 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1246
1247 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1248 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1249 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1250
1251 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1252 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1253
1254 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1255 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1256 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1257 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1258 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1259 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1260
1261 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1262 on Linux systems.
1263
1264 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1265 ---------------------
1266
1267 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1268
1269 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1270 -------------------
1271
1272 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1273 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1274 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1275 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1276
1277 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1278 configuration file from a primary one.
1279
1280 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1281 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1282 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1283 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1284 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1285 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1286 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1287 LVM.)
1288
1289 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1290 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1291
1292 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1293 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1294 refind.conf.
1295
1296 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1297 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1298
1299 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1300 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1301 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1302
1303 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1304 ------------------
1305
1306 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1307 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1308 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1309 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1310 option:
1311 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1312
1313 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1314 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1315 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1316 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1317 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1318 for them makes sense.
1319
1320 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1321 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1322 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1323 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1324
1325 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1326 were not actually edited.
1327
1328 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1329 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1330 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1331 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1332 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1333
1334 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1335 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1336 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1337 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1338 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1339 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1340 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1341 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1342
1343 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1344 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1345 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1346
1347 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1348 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1349 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1350
1351 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1352 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1353 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1354 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1355
1356 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1357 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1358 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1359
1360 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1361 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1362
1363 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1364 ------------------
1365
1366 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1367
1368 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1369 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1370 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1371
1372 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1373 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1374 told isn't working as planned).
1375
1376 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1377 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1378 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1379 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1380
1381 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1382 ------------------
1383
1384 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1385
1386 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1387 for disks.
1388
1389 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1390 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1391 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1392 done this for two reasons:
1393 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1394 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1395 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1396 default for them should help them.
1397 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1398 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1399 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1400 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1401 default configurations.
1402
1403 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1404
1405 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1406 ------------------
1407
1408 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1409
1410 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1411
1412 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1413 ------------------
1414
1415 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1416 32-bit systems.
1417
1418 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1419 on 32-bit systems.
1420
1421 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1422 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1423 loaders/OSes.
1424
1425 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1426
1427 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1428 ------------------
1429
1430 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1431 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1432
1433 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1434 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1435 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1436 graphics or text mode itself.)
1437
1438 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1439 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1440 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1441 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1442 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1443 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1444 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1445
1446 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1447
1448 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1449 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1450 "linux.conf" themselves.
1451
1452 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1453 -----------------
1454
1455 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1456 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1457 via rEFInd.
1458
1459 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1460 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1461 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1462 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1463 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1464 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1465 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1466 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1467 the boot order).
1468
1469 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1470 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1471
1472 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1473 ------------------
1474
1475 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1476 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1477 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1478 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1479 system hasn't hung.
1480
1481 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1482 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1483
1484 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1485
1486 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1487 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1488 label.)
1489
1490 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1491 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1492
1493 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1494 ------------------
1495
1496 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1497 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1498 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1499 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1500 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1501 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1502 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1503
1504 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1505 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1506 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1507
1508 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1509 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1510 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1511 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1512
1513 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1514 file when launched from rEFInd.
1515
1516 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1517 ------------------
1518
1519 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1520 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1521
1522 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1523 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1524 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1525 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1526 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1527 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1528
1529 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1530 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1531
1532 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1533 -----------------
1534
1535 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1536 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1537 sample configuration file for a full description.
1538
1539 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1540 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1541 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1542 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1543 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1544
1545 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1546 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1547 target).
1548
1549 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1550 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1551
1552 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1553 -----------------
1554
1555 - Improved menu navigation:
1556 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1557 down arrows move between rows.
1558 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1559 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1560 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1561 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1562
1563 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1564 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1565 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1566
1567 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1568 -----------------
1569
1570 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1571 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1572 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1573 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1574 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1575 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1576 will fail to work.
1577
1578 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1579 mode.
1580
1581 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1582
1583 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1584 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1585 options.
1586
1587
1588 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1589 ------------------
1590
1591 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1592 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1593
1594 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1595 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1596 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1597 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1598 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1599 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1600 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1601 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1602 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1603 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1604 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1605
1606 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1607 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1608 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1609 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1610 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1611
1612 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1613 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1614
1615 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1616 ------------------
1617
1618 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1619 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1620 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1621 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1622 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1623 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1624
1625 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1626 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1627 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1628 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1629 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1630 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1631 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1632 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1633 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1634 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1635 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1636 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1637 that resets the video mode.
1638
1639 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1640 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1641 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1642 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1643 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1644 details.
1645
1646 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1647 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1648 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1649 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1650 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1651 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1652
1653 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1654 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1655 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1656
1657 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1658 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1659 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1660 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1661
1662 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1663 ------------------
1664
1665 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1666 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1667 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1668 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1669 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1670 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1671 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1672 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1673 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1674 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1675 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1676 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1677 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1678 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1679 installation.
1680
1681 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1682
1683 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1684 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1685 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1686 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1687 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1688 directories you like.
1689
1690 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1691 ------------------
1692
1693 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1694 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1695 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1696 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1697 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1698 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1699 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1700 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1701
1702 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1703 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1704 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1705
1706 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1707 -----------------
1708
1709 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1710 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1711
1712 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1713 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1714 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1715 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1716 documented the name....
1717
1718 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1719 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1720 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1721
1722 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1723 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1724 directory) on certain systems.
1725
1726 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1727 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1728
1729 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1730 -----------------
1731
1732 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1733 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1734 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1735 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1736 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1737 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1738 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1739 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1740 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1741 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1742 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1743 to me.
1744
1745 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1746 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1747 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1748 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1749 simultaneously.)
1750
1751 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1752 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1753
1754 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1755 image.
1756
1757 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1758 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1759 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1760 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1761 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1762
1763 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1764 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1765 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1766 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1767 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1768 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1769
1770 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1771 ------------------
1772
1773 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1774 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1775 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1776 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1777 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1778 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1779 small sample of computers.
1780
1781 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1782 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1783 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1784 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1785 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1786
1787 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1788
1789 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1790 ------------------
1791
1792 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1793 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1794 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1795 versionless initrd file.
1796
1797 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1798 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1799 continues.
1800
1801 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1802 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1803 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1804
1805 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1806 ------------------
1807
1808 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1809 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1810 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1811 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1812
1813 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1814 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1815 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1816 directory as the kernel.
1817
1818 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1819 entries in refind.conf file.
1820
1821 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1822 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1823
1824
1825 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1826 ------------------
1827
1828 - Initial public release