Requirements ============ To compile rEFInd, you'll need the following: * A Linux installation. Note that this installation does NOT need to be EFI-based. It can use IA32 (aka x86, i386, or other things), X64 (aka x86-64, AMD64, or EM64T), or AA64 (aka AARCH64 or ARM64), but unless you use a cross-compiler, it must use the same CPU type and bit depth as your EFI implementation. (Normally that means 64-bit X64.) If you don't normally run Linux, you can run it in a VirtualBox or similar virtual machine. (I describe some unsupported non-Linux build options shortly.) * A standard set of Linux development tools, based on GCC. (I've tried using clang 3.4 under Ubuntu, with partial success. The main rEFInd binary, gptsync, and some drivers compile successfully; but only gptsync runs normally. The drivers I've tried and the main rEFInd binary crash.) * One of the following: * The TianoCore EDK2 package (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/). I initially used the UDK2010 package and others in that series, but beginning with rEFInd 0.8.2, I've been using UDK2014 (http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=UDK2014). All of the UDK are "frozen," rather than the main EDK2 development branch, which is changing as the developers add features, fix bugs, and so on. See below for TianoCore setup instructions. * The GNU-EFI package (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi/). You can install this from a package called "gnu-efi"; however, rEFInd relies on features that were added sometime between version 3.0s and 3.0u, so I recommend using 3.0u (or conceivably later). You should check your GNU-EFI version number; you may need to download the latest source code, compile it, and install it locally. The Makefiles assume a GNU-EFI package installed via a package manager. If you install from source code, you may need to adjust those Makefiles' paths. Of the two toolkits, I prefer to use TianoCore because it produces binaries that are about 5-30KiB smaller than those made by GNU-EFI, and I can easily build 32-bit binaries on my 64-bit Linux installations. Also, I've had problems on a 32-bit Mac Mini with the drivers produced by GNU-EFI hanging the system. (I haven't encountered this problem on UEFI-based PCs.) That said, the TianoCore EDK2 package is much harder to install, so you may prefer to use GNU-EFI unless you have a specific need for the TianoCore toolkit. Automated build tools like the OpenSUSE Build Service (OBS) and the Ubuntu Personal Package Archive (PPA) mechanism don't yet support TianoCore. It's possible to use a non-Linux platform to compile rEFInd. To the best of my knowledge, the rEFInd code doesn't rely on anything Linux-specific in its build requirements, and GNU-EFI's Sourceforge page indicates that it works under Windows and OS X, too; however, my one attempt to compile GNU-EFI under OS X failed. I've received one report that rEFInd compiles successfully with Clang and the TianoCore toolkit under OS X by adding the refind.inf file to a .dsc file that you use for your own projects. You can find brief instructions here (note that this is not my documentation): https://github.com/snarez/refind-edk2 Under Windows, you would need to either create a project or Makefile for your non-GCC compiler or use a GCC port, such as MinGW (http://www.mingw.org). You'd probably need to adjust the Makefiles in the latter case. A procedure similar to that used under OS X might work using GCC or Microsoft's C compiler, but I haven't tested this. Preparing Your Development Kit ============================== If you're using Linux, GNU-EFI is the easiest way to compile rEFInd. I don't describe GNU-EFI's setup here because it's likely to be fairly easy. If your distribution provides a recent enough version, you should be able to install a package called gnu-efi and be done with it. If not, you'll need to download the source code tarball, build it, and install it. This process is fairly typical of Linux packages. Read the GNU-EFI documentation if you need help. If you're using GNU-EFI, you can skip the rest of this section. You might want to use the TianoCore toolkit if you have problems with GNU-EFI or if you want to build rEFInd on a non-Linux platform. Unfortunately, the TianoCore toolkit is weird by Linux programming standards. It's also quite large -- it's intended as a means to develop a complete EFI firmware implementation, so it contains much more code than is needed to develop standalone EFI applications. I don't know of any Linux distribution packages for it in RPM, Debian package file, or other formats; you MUST install the kit from source code using its own unusual compilation procedure. The installation documentation also omits at least one step and is a bit unclear about others. Here's how I installed the toolkit: 1) Download UDK2014.SR1.UP1.P1 from https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=UDK2014. Note that UDK2015 is now available, but I have not yet adapted rEFInd to build with it. (UDK2015 has made changes that require matching changes to rEFInd.) 2) Type "mkdir /usr/local/UDK2014". You can use another directory, but the rEFInd Makefile assumes this location. You'll need to edit the EDK2BASE variable in the top-level Makefile if you install somewhere else. 3) Type "cd /usr/local/UDK2014". 4) Unzip the downloaded file (UDK2014.SR1.UP1.P1.Complete.MyWorkSpace.zip) in the current directory (/usr/local/UDK2014). This creates a handful of files, including a tarball and a couple of .zip files. 5) Type "unzip UDK2014.SR1.UP1.MyWorkSpace.zip". This extracts the platform-neutral portion of the development kit. 6) Type "cd MyWorkSpace". 7) Type "tar xvf ../BaseTools\(Unix\).tar". This extracts the Linux/Unix-specific portions of the toolkit. 8) Follow the build instructions at https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=Using_EDK_II_with_Native_GCC_4.4; however, a few changes are required, as detailed below.... 9) Type "source edksetup.sh BaseTools". This sets up some environment variables, so subsequent steps (NOT including compiling rEFInd or its drivers) must be typed in the shell you use for this step. 10) Edit Conf/target.txt and change the following: - ACTIVE_PLATFORM = MdePkg/MdePkg.dsc - TARGET = RELEASE (DEBUG might work, but I've not tested it). - TARGET_ARCH = X64 (on x86-64; leave this as IA32 on x86 or change it to AARCH64 on ARM64). If you plan to build multiple architectures, you can set this to "IA32 X64" or some other combination. - TOOL_CHAIN_TAG = GCC48 (or other value depending on your GCC version; type "gcc -v" to learn your GCC version number). Note that support for the latest GCC version takes a while to make it into the TianoCore toolkit, so if you're using a very recent GCC, you may need to specify an earlier version and hope for the best or modify Conf/target.txt, as described shortly. The TianoCore Makefiles read some of these variables from this file and use them when accessing directories, so be sure to type these entries in the case specified. 11) The documentation refers to editing Conf/tools_def.txt in addition to Conf/target.txt, but doesn't specify what to change in Conf/tools_def.txt. I haven't found it necessary to make any changes in Conf/tools_def.txt EXCEPT when using GCC 4.7 on a Fedora 17 system with the original UDK2014. With this setup, GCC 4.7 was newer than the most recent GCC that TianoCore supported at that time. With that setup, I found it necessary to change the following line: *_GCC46_X64_ASM_FLAGS = DEF(GCC46_ASM_FLAGS) -m64 -melf_x86_64 to: *_GCC46_X64_ASM_FLAGS = DEF(GCC46_ASM_FLAGS) -m64 Something similar may be necessary if you're using a very recent GCC or some other compiler. 12) Type "make -C /usr/local/UDK2014/MyWorkSpace/BaseTools/Source/C". (This step is not documented on the EDK Web page.) Note that this requires the g++ compiler and UUID development libraries. 13) Type "build" to build the main set of EDK2 files. This process is likely to take a few minutes. This step requires Python 2; if you have Python 3 installed, you may need to adjust the default python for this build (for instance, by typing "eselect python set python2.7" in Gentoo). If you installed in a location other than the one I've specified, you must edit the EDK2BASE variable in the top-level Makefile in the rEFInd source package. Once the toolkit is installed, you can build the filesystem drivers or rEFInd, as described below. Compiling rEFInd ================ With your development system set up, you can compile rEFInd as follows: 1) Download and uncompress the rEFInd source code archive. (If you're reading this file, you've probably already done this task.) 2) Open a Linux shell prompt 3) Change into the archive's main directory. You should see several files including this BUILDING.txt file and several subdirectories such as "refind", "libeg", "mok", "filesystems", and "include". 4) Type "make" to build rEFInd. The Makefile checks for the TianoCore toolkit and tries to use it if it's present. If both toolkits are installed, you can specify the toolkit name -- "make gnuefi" to build with GNU-EFI, or either "make tiano" to build with TianoCore. With any luck, rEFInd will compile without error, leaving the "refind_ia32.efi", "refind_x64.efi", or "refind_aa64.efi" file, depending on your platform, in the "refind" subdirectory. This same step builds the "gptsync_ia32.efi", "gptsync_x64.efi", or "gptsync_aa64.efi" program file, in the "gptsync" subdirectory. (When cross-compiling with TianoCore, "gptsync_aa64.efi" is not built because the cross-compiler failed for me. Since gptsync is likely to be useless on ARM64, this is no great loss.) If you want to build IA32 binaries on an x86-64 (X64) system, type "ARCH=ia32 make". Similarly, you can specify "ARCH=aarch64" to cross-compile for ARM64. This works only if you're using the TianoCore build kit, and only if you set TARGET_ARCH to the appropriate value in target.txt when you set up the TianoCore toolkit. If you plan to build multiple architectures, be sure to copy the .efi file for the first build out of the refind subdirectory before building the second architecture. 5) The default build process does NOT build the filesystem drivers. If you want to build them, you must type "make fs" in the main rEFInd source directory. This command builds with the TianoCore toolkit if it's available and with GNU-EFI if it's not. Alternatively, you can type "make fs_gnuefi" to build with GNU-EFI or "make fs_tiano" to build with TianoCore. (You can prepend "ARCH=ia32" or "ARCH=aarch64" to cross-compile for those architectures, as when building the main rEFInd binary.) The result is filesystem drivers in the filesystems subdirectory, and also copies placed in the drivers_{arch} subdirectory. If rEFInd doesn't compile correctly, you'll need to track down the source of the problem. Double-check that you've got all the necessary development tools installed, including GCC, make, and either GNU-EFI or TianoCore EDK2. You may also need to adjust the Makefile or Make.common file; or possibly Make* files in code subdirectories. (The main Makefile controls the process for both toolkits, while Make.common holds most common options.) The most likely thing you'll need to change is the path to the various GNU-EFI include files and libraries. Since rEFInd 0.6.2, the default Make.common file includes the following definitions: EFIINC = /usr/include/efi GNUEFILIB = /usr/lib EFILIB = /usr/lib EFICRT0 = /usr/lib If you've installed GNU-EFI from source code, you may need to add "local" to those paths, as in "/usr/local/include/efi". You might need to change references to "lib" to "lib32" or "lib64" on some systems. Recall that you need at least GNU-EFI version 3.0l to build rEFInd, and until very recently, most distributions provided out-of-date versions of this package. If you're using TianoCore's EDK2, as noted earlier, you may need to adjust the EDK2BASE variable in Makefile. When I tried to compile rEFInd under Ubuntu 12.04 (i386) using GNU-EFI, even with a locally-compiled GNU-EFI 3.0p or 3.0q, I got errors like this: main.o: In function `StartLegacy.isra.0': main.c:(.text+0x8b1): undefined reference to `__stack_chk_fail_local' lib.o: In function `ScanVolumeBootcode.part.3': lib.c:(.text+0xf2f): undefined reference to `__stack_chk_fail_local' lib.o: In function `ScanExtendedPartition.isra.4': The solution was to recompile GNU-EFI with the -fno-stack-protector GCC flag. In GNU-EFI, this can be added to the CFLAGS line in Make.defaults. Installing rEFInd ================= With rEFInd compiled, you can install it. The easiest way to do this is with the refind-install script, which works on both Linux and Mac OS X. Alternatively, you can type "make install" to install using this script. Note that this script copies files to the ESP and uses "efibootmgr" (on Linux) or "bless" (on OS X) to add rEFInd to the firmware's boot loader list. The docs/man/refind-install.8 file (and its HTML conversion, docs/refind/refind-install.html) provides more details on this script and its use. If refind-install doesn't work for you or if you prefer to do the job manually, you may. On a UEFI-based system, you'll want to copy files on the ESP as follows: * Create a directory for rEFInd, such as EFI/refind. * Copy refind/refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi to the ESP's EFI/refind directory. * Copy refind.conf-sample to the EFI/refind directory as refind.conf. * Copy the icons subdirectory, including all its files, to EFI/refind. You'll then need to activate rEFInd in your EFI. This can be done with tools such as "efibootmgr" under Linux or "bless" under OS X. See the docs/refind/installing.html file for details. Note to Distribution Maintainers ================================ The refind-install script, and therefore the "install" target in the Makefile, installs the program directly to the ESP and it modifies the *CURRENT COMPUTER's* NVRAM. Thus, you should *NOT* use this target as part of the build process for your binary packages (RPMs, Debian packages, etc.). (Gentoo could use it in an ebuild, though....) You COULD, however, install the files to a directory somewhere (/usr/share/refind or whatever) and then call refind-install as part of the binary package installation process. Placing the files directly in /boot/efi/EFI/{distname}/refind and then having a post-install script call efibootmgr is probably the better way to go, but this assumes that the ESP is mounted at /boot/efi. Compiling the EFI Filesystem Drivers ==================================== To build all the drivers, you can type "make fs", "make fs_tiano", or "make fs_gnuefi" from the main directory, which builds the drivers and places copies in both the filesystems and drivers_{arch} subdirectories. To install drivers, you can type "make install" in the "filesystems" directory. This copies all the drivers to the "/boot/efi/EFI/refind/drivers" directory. Alternatively, you can copy the files you want manually. The refind-install script includes an optional "--drivers" option that will install the drivers along with the main rEFInd program, but to the drivers_{arch} subdirectory of the main rEFInd installation directory. *CAUTION:* Install drivers for your system's architecture *ONLY*. Installing drivers for the wrong architecture causes some systems to hang at boot time. This risk can be minimized by including the architecture code in the drivers subdirectory name (drivers_x64 or drivers_ia32). The drivers all rely on filesystem wrapper code created by rEFIt's author, Christoph Pfisterer. Most of the drivers seem to have passed through Oracle's VirtualBox project (https://www.virtualbox.org) and the Clover boot loader project (https://sourceforge.net/projects/cloverefiboot/), which I used as the source for this build. Adding Support for Network Boot =============================== rEFInd provides EXPERIMENTAL support for booting over the network using iPXE (http://ipxe.org) as a means to receive the payload. In order to enable this feature you'll want to follow these instructions: * cd net/ * make source * make netboot * copy bin/ipxe.efi and bin/ipxe_discover.efi to the EFI volume at EFI/tools/ Note that you may need to install additional development packages, such as libiberty-dev and binutils-dev, in addition to those needed to build rEFInd itself. My own tests show this support to work under optimal conditions; however, architecture (EFI vs. BIOS) detection may not work, and some computers will hang or won't retrieve boot files from the network. For these reasons, this support is disabled by default in rEFInd, and I do not provide iPXE binaries.