4 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
5 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
6 sample configuration file for a full description.
8 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
9 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
10 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
11 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
12 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
14 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
15 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
18 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
19 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
24 - Improved menu navigation:
25 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
26 down arrows move between rows.
27 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
28 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
29 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
30 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
32 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
33 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
34 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
39 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
40 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
41 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
42 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
43 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
44 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
47 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
50 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
52 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
53 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
60 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
61 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
63 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
64 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
65 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
66 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
67 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
68 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
69 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
70 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
71 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
72 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
73 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
75 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
76 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
77 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
78 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
79 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
81 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
82 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
87 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
88 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
89 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
90 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
91 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
92 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
94 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
95 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
96 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
97 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
98 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
99 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
100 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
101 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
102 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
103 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
104 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
105 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
106 that resets the video mode.
108 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
109 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
110 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
111 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
112 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
115 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
116 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
117 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
118 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
119 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
120 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
122 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
123 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
124 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
126 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
127 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
128 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
129 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
134 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
135 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
136 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
137 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
138 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
139 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
140 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
141 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
142 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
143 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
144 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
145 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
146 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
147 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
150 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
152 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
153 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
154 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
155 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
156 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
157 directories you like.
162 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
163 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
164 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
165 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
166 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
167 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
168 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
169 should work when a volume is unnamed.
171 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
172 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
173 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
178 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
179 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
181 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
182 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
183 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
184 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
185 documented the name....
187 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
188 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
189 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
191 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
192 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
193 directory) on certain systems.
195 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
196 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
201 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
202 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
203 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
204 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
205 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
206 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
207 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
208 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
209 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
210 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
211 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
214 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
215 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
216 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
217 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
220 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
221 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
223 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
226 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
227 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
228 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
229 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
230 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
232 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
233 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
234 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
235 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
236 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
237 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
242 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
243 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
244 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
245 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
246 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
247 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
248 small sample of computers.
250 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
251 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
252 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
253 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
254 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
256 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
261 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
262 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
263 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
264 versionless initrd file.
266 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
267 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
270 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
271 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
272 than this, but such systems are very rare.
277 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
278 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
279 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
280 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
282 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
283 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
284 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
285 directory as the kernel.
287 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
288 entries in refind.conf file.
290 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
291 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
297 - Initial public release