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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  18 6/21/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.3</p>
  19
  20 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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  85
  86 <hr />
  87
  88 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
  89
  90 <hr />
  91
  92 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>beta-quality software!</i> I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every few days. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
  93
  94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  95
  96 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:</p>
  97
  98 <ul>
  99
 100 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.3/refind-src-0.4.3.zip/download">A
 101     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
 102     compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 103     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
 104     tools to build the main rEFInd binary, and Linux with the <a
 105     href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore
 106     development kit</a> for the drivers. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
 107     toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
 108     possible, but I've not attempted it.</li>
 109
 110 <li><b><a
 111     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.3/refind-bin-0.4.3.zip/download">A
 112     binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you
 113     want to install rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86
 114     or <i>x</i>86-64 computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by
 115     booting it on an optical disc. This zip file package includes both
 116     <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32) and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or
 117     EM64T) versions of rEFInd. Which you install depends on your
 118     architecture, as described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing
 119     rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 120
 121 <li><b><a
 122     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.3/refind-bin-tiano-0.4.3.zip/download">A
 123     binary zip file (built with TianoCore EDK2)</a></b>&mdash;This package
 124     is just like the preceding one, except that it was built using the
 125     TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2) rather than the GNU-EFI that was
 126     used to build the other binary. In theory, the two should work
 127     identically. In practice, they might not. I originally used GNU-EFI to
 128     develop rEFInd, so it's the safer version; however, I would appreciate
 129     feedback about the TianoCore EDK2 build.</li>
 130
 131 <li><b><a
 132     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.3/refind-cd-0.4.3.zip/download">A
 133     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 134     the GNU-EFI zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd (and its
 135     filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on UEFI PCs,
 136     but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then copy the
 137     files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in such a
 138     way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64) or
 139     32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
 140     shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
 141     so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
 142     don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
 143     be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
 144     shell.</li>
 145
 146 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 147     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 148     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 149     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 150     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 151     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 152     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 153
 154 </ul>
 155
 156 <p>If you're using another platform, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
 157
 158 <p>To extract the files from the zip file images I've provided, you'll need a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
 159
 160 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
 161
 162 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 163
 164 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/refind-efi-x86_64/">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=59810">git (experimental)</a> releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.</p>
 165
 166 <p>You can also obtain rEFInd from the <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages collection,</a> which creates packages for a number of OSes using its own packaging system.</p>
 167
 168 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
 169
 170 <hr />
 171
 172 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 173
 174 <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>
 175
 176 <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>
 177
 178 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 179
 180 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 181
 182   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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