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14 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
15
16 <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
17 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
18
19 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
20 11/8/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.10.0</p>
21
22
23 <p>This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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126
127 <hr />
128
129 <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>
130
131 <hr />
132
133 <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>
134
135 <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>
136
137 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
138
139 <ul>
140
141 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
142
143 <ul>
144
145 <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
146 I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
147 unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
148 add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
149 bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
150 systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
151 try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
152
153 <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
154 theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
155 theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
156 replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
157 Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
158 (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
159 information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
160 href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
161
162 </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
163
164 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
165
166 <ul>
167
168 <li>As described in reference to version 0.9.2 on the <a
169 href="revisions.html">Revisions</a> page, rEFInd includes a
170 delicate and hackish workaround to a problem introduced by Shim
171 0.8. Developing a better solution to that problem is a high
172 priority.</li>
173
174 <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
175 currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
176 off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
177 prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
178 boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
179 optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
180 icons.</li>
181
182 <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
183 or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
184 "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
185 like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
186 way to test such changes.</li>
187
188 <li>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
189 extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
190 so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
191 x86-64.</li>
192
193 <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
194 purposes.</li>
195
196 <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
197 use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
198 characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
199 monospace fonts.</li>
200
201 <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some
202 form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
203 optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
204
205 <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
206 and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
207 boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
208
209 <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
210 information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
211 upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
212 transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
213
214 <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
215 rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
216 OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
217 single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
218 support files.</li>
219
220 <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
221 icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
222 distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
223 BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
224 booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
225 probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
226 loader files or boot sector code.</li>
227
228 </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
229
230 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
231
232 <ul>
233
234 <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
235 some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
236 user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
237 that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
238 a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
239 removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
240 remission.</li>
241
242 <li>Some EFIs have bugs that cause the allegedly case-insensitive
243 <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
244 This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
245 Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
246 parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
247 "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
248 firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
249 other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
250 mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). This problem is
251 worse when compiling rEFInd with GNU-EFI than with Tianocore.
252 Version 0.9.1 has made improvements on this score, but some issues
253 may continue to lurk.</li>
254
255 <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
256 PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
257 fixed.</li>
258
259 <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
260 UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
261 Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
262 do it.</li>
263
264 <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
265 features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
266 but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
267 Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
268 causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
269 (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
270 unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
271 have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
272 receiving a patch.</li>
273
274 <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
275 BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
276 additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
277 menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
278 extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
279 I haven't fully tracked it down.</li>
280
281 <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
282 ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
283 This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
284
285 <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
286 re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
287 nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
288 EFI.</li>
289
290 <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
291 re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
292 have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
293 caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
294 shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
295
296 <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
297 slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
298 in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
299 volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
300 /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
301 and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
302
303 <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
304 similar problems.</li>
305
306 <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
307 or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
308 RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
309 already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
310 duplication with more filesystems.</li>
311
312 <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
313 when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
314 test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
315 exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
316 href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
317 <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
318 <a
319 href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
320 by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using
321 the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
322 cases.</li>
323
324 <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
325 multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
326 boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>
327
328 </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
329
330 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
331
332 <ul>
333
334 <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
335 BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
336 can see how it could be for some people.</li>
337
338 <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
339 boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
340 One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
341 stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
342 boot loader file.</li>
343
344 <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
345 detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
346 them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>
347
348 <li>Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
349 actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
350 complete keyboards.</li>
351
352 <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
353 monitors or who use tablets would be helpful.</li>
354
355 <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
356 that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
357 via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
358 to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
359 disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
360 cards.</li>
361
362 <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
363 information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
364 disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
365 the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
366 and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
367
368 <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
369 A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
370 requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
371 only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
372 as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
373 written in C.</li>
374
375 <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
376 loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
377 change its icon.</li>
378
379 <li>A GUI configuration tool for host OSes (Linux, OS X, Windows, etc.)
380 would be nice, but it's low on my personal priority list. If you'd
381 like to contribute, I prefer something written in a cross-platform
382 GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
383 major OSes.</li>
384
385 </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
386
387 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
388
389 <ul>
390
391 <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
392 are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
393 welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
394 BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
395 Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
396 for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
397
398 <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
399 to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
400 desirable.</li>
401
402 <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
403 one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
404 <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
405 computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
406 This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
407 since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
408 that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
409
410 </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
411
412 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>refind-install</tt>, or other
413 support tools:</b>
414
415 <ul>
416
417 <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
418 under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
419 partition table. Fix this.</li>
420
421 <li>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
422 external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
423 BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
424 makes it useless on those networks.</li>
425
426 <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
427
428 </ul></li>
429
430 </ul>
431
432 <hr />
433
434 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2015 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
435
436 <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>
437
438 <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>
439
440 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
441
442 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
443
444 <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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