href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-3/9/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.7.8</p>
+3/23/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.7.8</p>
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<h3>Installing rEFInd Manually Using an EFI Shell</h3>
</a>
+<p class="sidebar"><b>Warning:</b> Do not attempt to use the procedure described in this section on a Macintosh. Macs have a strange EFI implementation that does not use the EFI variables that this procedure manipulates. Therefore, chances are this procedure simply won't work. It's conceivable that this procedure will actually cause problems, but I'm not curious enough to try it and risk damaging my Mac!</p>
+
<p>If you can't currently boot any OS (say, because a firmware update has wiped your NVRAM entries), you may find it convenient to install rEFInd using an EFI version 2 shell. Unfortunately, the <tt>bcfg</tt> command described here is not available in the EFI version 1 shell, and the version 2 shell is unusable on many firmware implementations prior to 2.3.1. Thus, this procedure won't work for all systems.</p>
<p>In addition to emergency situations, using <tt>bcfg</tt> can be desirable if <tt>efibootmgr</tt> or other OS-hosted tools don't do the job. This happens under VirtualBox, for instance. An alternative in such cases can be to use <a href="#naming">alternative names for rEFInd.</a></p>
<p>Most of the reports of sluggish Macintosh boots I've seen note that the user installed rEFInd to the ESP rather than to the OS X root partition. Some users have reported that re-installing rEFInd to the OS X root partition clears up the problem. This is obviously a straightforward solution to the problem, if it works. Note that rEFInd can launch boot loaders that are stored on any partition that the EFI can read no matter where it's installed; therefore, you'll still be able to launch boot loaders stored on the ESP (or elsewhere) if you install it in this way.</p>
-<p>The biggest drawback to this approach is that you won't be able to edit the rEFInd configuration file or move rEFInd-related binaries from an EFI shell if you install it in this way, since Apple's HFS+ driver for EFI is read-only. (The same is true of rEFInd's HFS+ driver, so it won't help you overcome this limitation.) You may also be limited in making changes to your rEFInd configuration from Linux or other OSes, too, since Linux's HFS+ drivers disable write support by default on volumes with an active journal. You can force write access by using the <tt>force</tt> option to <tt>mount</tt>; however, this procedure is noted as being risky in the Linux HFS+ documentation, so I don't recommend doing this on a regular basis. As a compromise, you might try creating a small non-journaled HFS+ volume that's dedicated to holding rEFInd. You could even mount it as the Linux <tt>/boot</tt> partition, in which case it would also hold the Linux kernel and related files. You'll need to install rEFInd manually if you try this.</p>
+<p>A variant of this solution is to create a small (~100MiB) HFS+ volume to be used exclusively by rEFInd. You can then install rEFInd to that volume with the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> option to <tt>install.sh</tt>, as in <tt class="userinput">./install.sh --ownhfs /dev/disk0s6</tt> if the volume is <tt>/dev/disk0s6</tt>. This approach has the advantage that it can be managed via OS X's own Startup Disk tool in System Preferences.</p>
+
+<p>The biggest drawback to storing rEFInd on an HFS+ volume is that you won't be able to edit the rEFInd configuration file or move rEFInd-related binaries from an EFI shell if you install it in this way, since Apple's HFS+ driver for EFI is read-only. (The same is true of rEFInd's HFS+ driver, so it won't help you overcome this limitation.) You may also be limited in making changes to your rEFInd configuration from Linux or other OSes, too, since Linux's HFS+ drivers disable write support by default on volumes with an active journal. You can force write access by using the <tt>force</tt> option to <tt>mount</tt>; however, this procedure is noted as being risky in the Linux HFS+ documentation, so I don't recommend doing this on a regular basis on the OS X boot volume. This isn't as risky if you use a dedicated HFS+ rEFInd partition, though. You could even mount it as the Linux <tt>/boot</tt> partition, in which case it would also hold the Linux kernel and related files. If you use disk encryption, you can't store rEFInd on the OS X root (<tt>/</tt>) partition, but you could still use an (unencrypted) separate HFS+ partition.</p>
<p>A variant of this solution is suggested in <a href="http://www.sparxeng.com/blog/software/fixing-slow-boot-on-a-triple-boot-mountain-lion-mac">this blog post,</a> which recommends placing rEFInd on an HFS+ volume on the first SATA channel. (In the blogger's case, that channel used to hold an optical drive, but that drive was replaced by a hard disk.)</p>