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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
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12 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
13
14 <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
16
17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
18 5/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.3</p>
19
20
21 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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86
87 <hr />
88
89 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
90
91 <hr />
92
93 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
94
95 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
96
97 <p>Without further ado, then, and in no particular order:</p>
98
99 <ul>
100
101 <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones I've
102 made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
103 unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to add
104 features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for bugs to
105 get into the program. I can only test on a handful of systems with a
106 limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you try rEFInd and run
107 into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
108
109 <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86 or
110 <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its "About"
111 screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd like to add detection for Itanium
112 and ARM systems, but I have no way to test such changes.</li>
113
114 <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so rEFInd's
115 boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have artistic talent
116 and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel free to send it to
117 me. I won't make any final decision about changes until at least June
118 30 of 2012.</li>
119
120 <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
121 theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new theme
122 for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not replace the
123 icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen Icons package),
124 but I may provide links to themes on this Web site (or even host them
125 on the project's Sourceforge page). For more information on designing
126 themes for rEFInd, see the <a href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a>
127 page.</li>
128
129 <li>If the <tt>icons_dir</tt> option points to a non-existent directory,
130 the program displays ugly "icon-missing" icons. It would be better to
131 drop back to the default icon set.</li>
132
133 <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of various
134 graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to version
135 0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with 800x600 and
136 smaller displays because of an inability to properly crop the graphics
137 fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2, I've put a band-aid on
138 this problem by reducing the field size so that it now works on 800x600
139 displays, but smaller displays still suffer from this problem. This is
140 just an example of the inflexibility of certain layout issues within
141 rEFInd.</li>
142
143 <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple image
144 sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file, rEFInd
145 can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the desired size
146 would be useful.</li>
147
148 <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if it
149 would.</li>
150
151 <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot loader
152 resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID from the
153 partition data is harder than extracting the volume's label or counting
154 up the filesystem numbers.</li>
155
156 <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders and/or
157 initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the boot
158 loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
159
160 <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
161 BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I can
162 see how it could be for some people.</li>
163
164 <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
165 UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on Macs&mdash;or
166 at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my UEFI-based PCs. (I
167 have an idea about this, but haven't yet investigated it in detail. If
168 you'd like to help on this, <a
169 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
170 thoughts.)</li>
171
172 <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte Hybrid
173 EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
174 <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
175 This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance: Changing
176 the case of icon filename extensions (or various other parts of icon
177 filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly "generic" ones; and
178 rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the firmware sometimes
179 returns an all-caps version of the filename, but other times returns
180 the filename with the correct case, causing a mismatch if the path
181 includes lowercase elements). Some of these problems can be overcome by
182 converting both strings to be compared to one case before doing the
183 comparison, but others aren't so easy, since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt>
184 is being called internally to the EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to
185 fix some of these problems. OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on
186 just one EFI implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined
187 to just let it go.</li>
188
189 <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
190 whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7. Unfortunately,
191 I lack the hardware to test this.</li>
192
193 <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
194 On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
195 fixed.</li>
196
197 <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for boot
198 options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.</li>
199
200 <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot loader
201 settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or change its
202 icon.</li>
203
204 <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>, <tt>bless</tt>,
205 or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot set would be
206 useful.</li>
207
208 <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful. This
209 would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk boot.
210 Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be launched
211 much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
212
213 <li>I'd like to find a way to have rEFInd re-scan removable media when
214 they're inserted.</li>
215
216 <li>Enabling users to eject removable media would be useful.</li>
217
218 <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
219 per-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
220
221 <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and similar
222 problems.</p>
223
224 </ul>
225
226 <hr />
227
228 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
229
230 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
231
232 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
233
234 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
235
236 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
237
238 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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