href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-5/9/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.4</p>
+1/16/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.5</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>
<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>
-<p>Without further ado, then, and in no particular order:</p>
+<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>
<ul>
-<li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones I've
- made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
- unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to add
- features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for bugs to
- get into the program. I can only test on a handful of systems with a
- limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you try rEFInd and run
- into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
-
-<li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86 or
- <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its "About"
- screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd like to add detection for Itanium
- and ARM systems, but I have no way to test such changes.</li>
-
-<li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so rEFInd's
- boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have artistic talent
- and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel free to send it to
- me. I won't make any final decision about changes until at least June
- 30 of 2012.</li>
-
-<li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
- theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new theme
- for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not replace the
- icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen Icons package),
- but I may provide links to themes on this Web site (or even host them
- on the project's Sourceforge page). For more information on designing
- themes for rEFInd, see the <a href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a>
- page.</li>
-
-<li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of various
- graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to version
- 0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with 800x600 and
- smaller displays because of an inability to properly crop the graphics
- fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2, I've put a band-aid on
- this problem by reducing the field size so that it now works on 800x600
- displays, but smaller displays still suffer from this problem. This is
- just an example of the inflexibility of certain layout issues within
- rEFInd.</li>
-
-<li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple image
- sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file, rEFInd
- can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the desired size
- would be useful.</li>
-
-<li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if it
- would.</li>
-
-<li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot loader
- resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID from the
- partition data is harder than extracting the volume's label or counting
- up the filesystem numbers.</li>
-
-<li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders and/or
- initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the boot
- loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
-
-<li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
- BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I can
- see how it could be for some people.</li>
-
-<li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
- UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on Macs—or
- at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my UEFI-based PCs. (I
- have an idea about this, but haven't yet investigated it in detail. If
- you'd like to help on this, <a
- href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
- thoughts.)</li>
-
-<li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte Hybrid
- EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
- <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
- This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance: Changing
- the case of icon filename extensions (or various other parts of icon
- filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly "generic" ones; and
- rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the firmware sometimes
- returns an all-caps version of the filename, but other times returns
- the filename with the correct case, causing a mismatch if the path
- includes lowercase elements). Some of these problems can be overcome by
- converting both strings to be compared to one case before doing the
- comparison, but others aren't so easy, since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt>
- is being called internally to the EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to
- fix some of these problems. OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on
- just one EFI implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined
- to just let it go.</li>
-
-<li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
- whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7. Unfortunately,
- I lack the hardware to test this.</li>
-
-<li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
- On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
- fixed.</li>
-
-<li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for boot
- options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.</li>
-
-<li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot loader
- settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or change its
- icon.</li>
-
-<li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>, <tt>bless</tt>,
- or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot set would be
- useful.</li>
-
-<li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful. This
- would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk boot.
- Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be launched
- much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
-
-<li>I'd like to find a way to have rEFInd re-scan removable media when
- they're inserted.</li>
-
-<li>Enabling users to eject removable media would be useful.</li>
-
-<li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
- per-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
-
-<li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and similar
- problems.</p>
+<li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
+ I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
+ unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
+ add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
+ bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
+ systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
+ try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
+
+ <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so
+ rEFInd's boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have
+ artistic talent and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel
+ free to send it to me. I won't make any final decision about
+ changes until at least June 30 of 2012.</li>
+
+ <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
+ theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
+ theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
+ replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
+ Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
+ (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
+ information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
+ href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
+
+ </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
+
+<li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
+ icons.</li>
+
+ <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
+ or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
+ "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
+ like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
+ way to test such changes.</li>
+
+ <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple
+ image sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file,
+ rEFInd can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the
+ desired size would be useful.</li>
+
+ <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
+ loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
+ from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
+ label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</li>
+
+ <li>Currently, if a filesystem's label comes up empty, rEFInd
+ substitutes the size, so you get displays like <tt>boot
+ EFI\foo\bar.efi from 90 GiB volume</tt>. I'd like to add more
+ checks to substitute the GPT <i>partition</i> label if the
+ <i>filesystem</i> label comes up empty.</li>
+
+ <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> option in <tt>refind.conf</tt> could
+ be improved by supporting a list of default options, so that if the
+ first item isn't found, rEFInd will try to boot the second one in
+ the list, and so on. This could be handy in case a driver fails to
+ load, or to provide an override in case the user inserts a specific
+ removable disk—by placing the removable disk's name first in
+ the list, it will take precedence over the normal hard disk
+ default.</li>
+
+ <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the default_selection might
+ be expanded to support some form of specification of disk types, as
+ in a special entry for any optical disk or any external disk, no
+ matter what its name is.</li>
+
+ <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
+ and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
+ boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
+
+ </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
+
+<li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
+ Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
+ <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
+ This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
+ Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
+ parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
+ "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
+ firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
+ other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
+ mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
+ problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
+ to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
+ since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
+ EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
+ OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
+ implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
+ let it go.</li>
+
+ <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
+ PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
+ fixed.</li>
+
+ <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
+ UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
+ Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
+ do it.</li>
+
+ <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
+ ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
+ This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
+
+ <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
+ re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
+ nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
+ EFI.</li>
+
+ <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
+ re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
+ have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
+ caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
+ shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
+
+ <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
+ slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
+ in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
+ volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
+ /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
+ and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
+
+ <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
+ similar problems.</li>
+
+ </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
+
+<li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
+ it would.</li>
+
+ <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
+ BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
+ can see how it could be for some people.</li>
+
+ <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
+ whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
+ Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
+ understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
+ installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
+ See <a
+ href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
+ forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
+
+ <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
+ boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
+ One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
+ stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
+ boot loader file.</li>
+
+ <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
+ information utility—something to tell you about your hard
+ disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
+ the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
+ and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
+
+ <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
+ A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
+ requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
+ only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
+ as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
+ written in C.</li>
+
+ <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
+ loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
+ change its icon.</li>
+
+ <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
+ purposes.</li>
+
+ <li>Going further, the ability to load arbitrary other fonts, ideally
+ in a standard format, would be desirable for theming purposes.</li>
+
+ <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
+ priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
+ written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
+ can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
+
+ </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
+
+<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Given the talk of
+ shifting to Btrfs, that should be the priority; however, other
+ Linux filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
+ additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
+ RAID setups would be useful, too.</li>
+
+ <li>As detailed on the <a href="drivers.html">drivers page,</a> there
+ are performance issues with the drivers on some systems. I suspect
+ that most "real" computers aren't greatly affected (in my tests,
+ the problem is worst with VirtualBox, and the next worst is a
+ system that uses <a
+ href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/">DUET</a>). Nonetheless,
+ I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.</li>
+
+ <li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
+ what the volume's real label is.</li>
+
+ <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
+ to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
+ desirable.</li>
+
+ <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
+ one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
+ <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
+ computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
+ This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
+ since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
+ that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
+
+ </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
</ul>
<hr />
-<p>copyright © 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
+<p>copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
<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>