-<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
+F<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-12/21/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.6.1</p>
+3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8</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>
<h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
-<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—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:</p>
+<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—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:</p>
<ul>
<li><b><a
- href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.1/refind-src-0.6.1.zip/download">A
- source code zip file</a></b>—This is useful if you want to
-
compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-src-0.6.8.zip/download">A
+ source code zip file</a></b>—This is useful if you want to compile
+ the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
- Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binaries (below), although the
- <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
- development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
- toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
- possible, but I've not attempted it.</li>
+ Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary packages (below),
+ although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
+ development tools are also supported.</li>
<li><b><a
- href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.1/refind-bin-0.6.1.zip/download">A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-bin-0.6.8.zip/download">A
binary zip file</a></b>—Download this if you want to install
rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
- href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
+ href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page. Some users of Arch
+ Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
+ with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a <a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.6.8.zip/download">variant
+ package</a> exists in which the <i>x</i>86-64 binary was compiled with
+ GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
+ users with this problem; but using GNU-EFI also means that this version
+ can't launch BIOS-mode OSes.</li>
+
+<li><b><a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-0.6.8-1.x86_64.rpm/download">A
+ binary RPM file</a></b>—If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64
+ Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
+ package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
+ equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the <tt>install.sh</tt>
+ script (described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing
+ rEFInd</a> page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
+ maintainers can examine the <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source
+ package and tweak it to their needs. The <a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-0.6.8-1.src.rpm/download">source
+ RPM file</a> might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
+ on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
+ files.</li>
+
+<li><b><a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind_0.6.8-1_amd64.deb/download">A
+ binary Debian package</a></b>—If you use an <i>x</i>86-64 version
+ of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
+ install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
+ package using <tt>alien</tt>.</li>
<!--
<li><b><a
either build.)</li>
-->
-<p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.</p>
+<p class="sidebar"><b>Note:</b> At the moment, neither the bootable CD-R image file nor the bootable USB flash drive image file supports booting with Secure Boot active.</p>
<li><b><a
- href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.1/refind-cd-0.6.1.zip/download">A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-cd-0.6.8.zip/download">A
CD-R image file</a></b>—This download contains the same files as
the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
(and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
shell.</li>
+<p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want to make your own bootable USB
+flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB
+flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt>
+program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the
+<tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh
+--usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition
+on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted
+computer.</p>
+
+<li><b><a
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-flashdrive-0.6.8.zip/download">A
+ USB flash drive image file</a></b>—Although you can create
+ your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
+ this version and copy it to your USB drive with <tt>dd</tt> or some
+ other low-level disk copying utility.</li>
+
<li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
git</a></b>—If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
UEFI-based PCs.</li>
+<li><b>ALT Linux</b>—This RPM-based distribution is experimenting with
+ using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT developers haven't
+ yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a tricky and delicate
+ task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image), but they're working on
+ the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see <a
+ href="http://packages.altlinux.org/en/Sisyphus/srpms/refind">this page</a>
+ for details.</li>
+
+<li><b><a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/">Fat
+ Dog</a></b>—This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
+ rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
+ provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.</li>
+
<li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
collection</a></b>—This site creates packages for a number of
OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
-<li><b><a
- href="https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=refind&project=home%3Amichael-chang%3AUEFI">OpenSUSE
- Build Service (OBS)</a></b>—This site holds a binary x86-64 build
- of rEFInd that should install on any RPM-based distribution. It doesn't
- completely set up rEFInd, though; it just places the rEFInd files in
- the <tt>/usr/share/refind</tt> directory, and a copy of
- <tt>install.sh</tt> as <tt>/usr/sbin/refind_install</tt>.
- Unfortunately, the script makes assumptions about the locations of
- files and so is useless when files are moved around in this way. Thus,
- you'll need to install manually after installing this RPM, so you might
- as well download the rEFInd binary <tt>.zip</tt> file from Sourceforge
- instead.</li>
-
-<li><b>Slackware</b>—Although it doesn't seem to be an official build, <a
- href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this site</a> has links to rEFInd
- binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and 14.0.</li>
+<li><b>Slackware</b>—Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
+ build, <a href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this
+ site</a> has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
+ 14.0.</li>
</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>