<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 1/16/2013</p>
+<p>Last Web page update: 4/25/2013</p>
<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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<hr />
<ul>
+<li><b>0.6.9 (4/25/2013)</b>—The most visible change to this version is to the rEFInd banner image, which now includes an icon provided by Erik Kemperman. The biggest change with this version is the inclusion of an updated version of <tt>gptsync</tt>, which is popular on Macs as a means of maintaining the <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html">hybrid MBR</a> that's required to boot Windows in BIOS mode on that platform. Because hybrid MBRs are ugly and dangerous, though, the rEFInd <tt>install.sh</tt> script installs the program only under OS X, and even then it must be activated by uncommending the <tt>scanfor</tt> line in <tt>refind.conf</tt> and adding <tt>gptsync</tt> to its options list. If you want to use <tt>gptsync</tt> on a PC, you can, but you'll need to copy the program file manually to the ESP's <tt>EFI/tools</tt> directory. Other changes with this version include working around a suspected firmware bug that can cause hangs when rEFInd starts on some systems and changing the timeout code so that rEFInd will launch its default OS even if the computer is started without a keyboard.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.8 (3/18/2013)</b>—This version fixes a few obscure bugs but adds only one minor new feature. Most notably, it fixes a problem that caused "Invalid Parameter" errors to appear when scanning for boot loaders on some systems; fixes a bug that caused icons defined in files named after boot loaders to not appear; and fixes a bug in the <tt>install.sh</tt> script that caused the script to fail on some systems. It also enables you to name a shell <tt>shell.efi</tt> in the root directory (previously only <tt>shell_<i>arch</i>.efi</tt> worked in the root directory, although <tt>shell.efi</tt> worked in the <tt>EFI/tools</tt> directory).</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.7 (2/3/2013)</b>—This version fixes a few bugs and adds some minor features relating to Secure Boot. Bug fixes include keeping rEFInd out of its own menu when it's launched as <tt>EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi</tt>; keeping the <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> option out of the <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt> list; a fix for <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> so that it applies to the OS X boot loader; and a fix for a bug that caused PNG files in a user-specified icons directory to be ignored if an ICNS file was available in the standard icons directory. New features include support for the Linux Foundation's <tt>HashTool.efi</tt> as a MOK utility, scanning for MOK utilities on all volumes, and a more verbose error message when a Secure Boot authentication failure occurs.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.6 (1/26/2013)</b>—This version includes two new features and a number of minor bug fixes. The first new feature is support for changing rEFInd's font via the <tt>font</tt> token in <tt>refind.conf</tt>. You're limited to monospace fonts that are encoded as PNG files; you can't use variable-width fonts or normal font files like TrueType fonts. The fonts support only ASCII characters. See the <a href="themes.html#fonts">fonts section on the Theming rEFInd page</a> for details. I've also changed the default font to a slightly larger one that's anti-aliased. The second new feature is that rEFInd now detects when the <tt>EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi</tt> (or <tt>EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi</tt> on 32-bit systems) boot loader is a duplicate of another boot loader, and automatically excludes it from the OS list. This is useful on systems that boot with Windows, since Windows tends to install its boot loader twice, once using the <tt>EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi</tt> filename. Bug fixes are described in the <tt>NEWS.txt</tt> file, and include fixes for bugs that prevented manual boot stanzas in included configuration files from being detected; that caused an <tt>ASSERT</tt> error to appear on the screen on some systems if <tt>default_selection</tt> was not set; the caused <tt>Binary is whitelisted</tt> messages to persist on the screen when loading signed EFI drivers with Secure Boot active; that caused rEFInd to ignore <tt>icon</tt> tokens in <tt>refind.conf</tt> manual boot stanzas; and that caused the <tt>install.sh</tt> script to fail to update drivers when rEFInd was installed to <tt>EFI/BOOT</tt>.</li>
+
<li><b>0.6.5 (1/16/2013)</b>—Most of this version's changes relate to icon, graphics, and theming features. The biggest code change is in support for PNG files for banners, icons, and selection backgrounds. I've also fixed bugs that prevented large banners from being used; you can now use banners as big as the screen (or bigger, but they'll be cropped), as illustrated on the <a href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page. The text color also now automatically switches between black and white depending on the background over which it's displayed. If you don't use these features, you're likely to notice some changes in where certain elements are displayed. Most obviously, the banner appears higher on the screen than it did previously, so as to minimize the chance of overlap with text displays such as the information screen. These text displays should appear correctly even on tiny 640x480 displays (they were blank on such small displays in the past). I've added icons for <a href="https://www.haiku-os.org/">Haiku</a> and <a href="http://www.altlinux.com/">ALT Linux.</a> Finally, the only non-graphics development is the addition of a "safe mode" boot option for OS X, which you can disable by adding <tt>safemode</tt> to the <tt>hideui</tt> option in <tt>refind.conf</tt>.</li>
<li><b>0.6.4 (1/8/2013)</b>—Bug fixes motivate this release; it corrects a couple of memory management bugs in 0.6.3 that cause rEFInd to hang at startup on some computers (unfortunately not on any of mine, so I missed this). I've also made a small change to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script so that it installs the ext2fs driver rather than the ext4fs driver if the script detects that a Linux kernel is on an ext2fs or ext3fs partition. This can keep rEFInd from scanning ext4fs partitions and picking up non-functional symbolic links to vmlinuz on such partitions.</li>