href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-8/7/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.7.3</p>
+12/15/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.7.6</p>
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<h2>Adjusting the Global Configuration</h2>
</a>
-<p>You can adjust many of rEFInd's options by editing its <tt>refind.conf</tt> file. You can use any text editor you like for the job, but be sure it saves the file in plain ASCII text, not in a word processing format. (In theory, a UTF-16 encoding should also work, but I've not tried that myself.) Note that the EFI shell includes its own editor. If you need to make a change before you launch an OS, you can launch a shell, change to the rEFInd directory, and type <b><tt>edit refind.conf</tt></b> to edit the file. This EFI editor is quite primitive, but it gets the job done. After editing, you'll need to reboot for rEFInd to read the changed configuration file.</p>
+<p>You can adjust many of rEFInd's options by editing its configuration file. This file is called <tt>refind.conf</tt> by default; but you can use another filename by passing <tt>-c <tt class="variable">filename</tt></tt> as an option, as in <tt>refind_x64.efi -c myrefind.conf</tt> to use <tt>myrefind.conf</tt> in rEFInd's main directory. You can specify a configuration file in another directory, but to do so, you <i>must</i> use backslashes as directory separators, as in <tt>-c \EFI\other\refind.conf</tt>. This feature is intended for users who want to have rEFInd appear in its own menu, with the version launched in this way behaving differently from the original—for instance, to have a secondary rEFInd that provides boot options hidden by the main one. In this scenario, the default <tt>refind.conf</tt> would have a <a href="#stanzas">manual boot stanza</a> defining the new rEFInd instance, including its <tt>-c</tt> option.</p>
+
+<p>You can use any text editor you like to edit <tt>refind.conf</tt>, but be sure it saves the file in plain ASCII text, not in a word processing format. (In theory, a UTF-16 encoding should also work, but this has been poorly tested.) Note that the EFI shell includes its own editor. If you need to make a change before you launch an OS, you can launch a shell, change to the rEFInd directory, and type <b><tt>edit refind.conf</tt></b> to edit the file. This EFI editor is quite primitive, but it gets the job done. After editing, you'll need to reboot or re-launch rEFInd for rEFInd to read the changed configuration file.</p>
<p>Global configuration file options consist of a name token followed by one or more parameters, as in:</p>
<tr>
<td><tt>screensaver</tt></td>
<td>numeric value</td>
- <td>Sets the number of seconds of inactivity before the screen blanks to prevent burn-in. The display returns after most keypresses (unfortunately, not including modifiers such as Shift, Control, Alt, or Option). The default is <tt>0</tt>, which disables this feature.</td>
+ <td>Sets the number of seconds of inactivity before the screen blanks to prevent burn-in. The display returns after most keypresses (unfortunately, not including modifiers such as Shift, Control, Alt, or Option). The default is <tt>0</tt>, which disables this feature. Setting this token to <tt>-1</tt> causes a blank display until the <tt>timeout</tt> value passes or you press a key.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>hideui</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>showtools</tt></td>
- <td><tt>shell</tt>, <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, <tt>mok_tool</tt>, <tt>about</tt>, <tt>exit</tt>, <tt>shutdown</tt>, <tt>reboot</tt>, and <tt>firmware</tt></td>
- <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>
gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>apple_recovery</tt> boots the OS X Recovery HD, <tt>mok_tool</tt> launches a tool to manage Machine Owner Keys (MOKs) on systems with Secure Boot active, <tt>about</tt> displays information about the program, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on some UEFI PCs), <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer, and <tt>firmware</tt> reboots the computer into the computer's own setup utility. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, shutdown, reboot, firmware</tt>. Note that the <tt>shell</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, and <tt>mok_tool</tt> options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd. The <tt>gptsync</tt> option requires use of a like-named program which, although it ships with rEFInd 0.6.9 and later, is not installed by default except under OS X. See the <a href="installing.html#addons">"Installing Additional Components"</a> section of the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page for pointers to the shell and <tt>gptsync</tt> programs. The <tt>apple_recovery</tt> option will appear only if you've got an Apple Recovery HD partition (which has a boot loader called <tt>com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi</tt>). The <tt>firmware</tt> option works only on computers that support this option; on other computers, the option is quietly ignored. See the <a href="secureboot.html">Secure Boot</a> page for information on Secure Boot and MOK management.</td>
+ <td><tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, <tt>mok_tool</tt>, <tt>about</tt>, <tt>exit</tt>, <tt>shutdown</tt>, <tt>reboot</tt>, and <tt>firmware</tt></td>
+ <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>
memtest</tt> (or <tt>memtest86</tt> launches the <a href="http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm">Memtest86</a> program, <tt>gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>apple_recovery</tt> boots the OS X Recovery HD, <tt>mok_tool</tt> launches a tool to manage Machine Owner Keys (MOKs) on systems with Secure Boot active, <tt>about</tt> displays information about the program, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on some UEFI PCs), <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer, and <tt>firmware</tt> reboots the computer into the computer's own setup utility. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, memtest, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, shutdown, reboot, firmware</tt>. Note that the <tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, and <tt>mok_tool</tt> options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd. The <tt>gptsync</tt> option requires use of a like-named program which, although it ships with rEFInd 0.6.9 and later, is not installed by default except under OS X. See the <a href="installing.html#addons">"Installing Additional Components"</a> section of the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page for pointers to the shell, Memtest86, and <tt>gptsync</tt> programs. The <tt>apple_recovery</tt> option will appear only if you've got an Apple Recovery HD partition (which has a boot loader called <tt>com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi</tt>). The <tt>firmware</tt> option works only on computers that support this option; on other computers, the option is quietly ignored. See the <a href="secureboot.html">Secure Boot</a> page for information on Secure Boot and MOK management.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>font</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_volumes</tt></td>
<td>filesystem label(s)</td>
- <td>Adds the specified volume or volumes to a volume "blacklist"—these filesystems are <i>not</i> scanned for EFI boot loaders. This may be useful to keep unwanted EFI boot entries, such as for a Macintosh recovery partition, from appearing on the main list of boot loaders. The default value is <tt>Recovery HD</tt>, to keep the Mac recovery volume from appearing. (It should get its own tools icon instead—see the <tt>showtools</tt> token.)</td>
+ <td>Adds the specified volume or volumes to a volume "blacklist"—these filesystems are <i>not</i> scanned for EFI boot loaders. This may be useful to keep unwanted EFI boot entries, such as for a Macintosh recovery partition, from appearing on the main list of boot loaders. The default value is <tt>Recovery HD</tt>, to keep the Mac recovery volume from appearing. (It should get its own tools icon instead—see the <tt>showtools</tt> token.) Note that on a Macintosh with whole-disk encryption, you may need to uncomment this token and leave <tt>"Recovery HD"</tt> <i>off</i> the list to boot the system.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_dirs</tt></td>
<td>none or <tt>0</tt></td>
<td>When set, causes rEFInd to add Linux kernels (files with names that begin with <tt>vmlinuz</tt> or <tt>bzImage</tt>) to the list of EFI boot loaders, even if they lack <tt>.efi</tt> filename extensions. The hope is that this will simplify use of rEFInd on distributions that provide kernels with EFI stub loader support but that don't give those kernels names that end in <tt>.efi</tt>. Of course, the kernels must still be stored on a filesystem that rEFInd can read, and in a directory that it scans. (<a href="drivers.html">Drivers</a> and the <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt> options can help with those issues.) Note that this option can cause unwanted files to be improperly detected and given loader tags, such as older kernels without EFI stub loader support. Versions of rEFInd prior to 0.5.0 left this option commented out in the <tt>refind.conf-sample</tt> file, but as of version 0.5.0, this option is enabled in the default configuration file. The program default remains to not scan for such kernels, though, so you can delete or uncomment this option to keep them from appearing in your boot menu. Passing any option but <tt>0</tt> causes scans for all kernels to occur; passing a <tt>0</tt> causes these kernels to not be scanned. (This could be useful if you want to override a setting of <tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt> in an included secondary configuration file.)</td>
</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td><tt>max_tags</tt></td>
+ <td>numeric (integer) value</td>
+ <td>Limits the number of tags that rEFInd will display at one time. If rEFInd discovers more loaders than this value, they're shown in a scrolling list. The default value is <tt>0</tt>, which imposes no limit.</td>
+</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>default_selection</tt></td>
- <td>a substring of a boot loader's title; or a numeric position</td>
- <td>Sets the default boot OS based on the loader's title, which appears in the main menu beneath the icons when you select the loader. You can enter any substring of the title as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, so long as it's two or more characters in length. It's best to use a unique substring, since rEFInd stops searching when it finds the first match. Because rEFInd sorts entries within a directory in descending order by file modification time, if you specify a directory (or volume name, for loaders in a partition's root directory) as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, the most recent loader in that directory will be the default. One-character entries are matched against the first character of the title, except for digits, which refer to the numeric order of the boot loader entries.</td>
+ <td>a substring of a boot loader's title, or a numeric position; optionally followed by two times in <tt class="variable">HH:MM</tt> format</td>
+ <td>Sets the default boot OS based on the loader's title, which appears in the main menu beneath the icons when you select the loader. You can enter any substring of the title as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, so long as it's two or more characters in length. It's best to use a unique substring, since rEFInd stops searching when it finds the first match. Because rEFInd sorts entries within a directory in descending order by file modification time, if you specify a directory (or volume name, for loaders in a partition's root directory) as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, the most recent loader in that directory will be the default. One-character entries are matched against the first character of the title, except for digits, which refer to the numeric order of the boot loader entries. If you specify a comma-delimited list of names <i><b>in quotation marks,</b></i> rEFInd will search on these in turn until it finds a match. For instance, <tt>default_selection "alpha,beta"</tt> will launch <tt>alpha</tt> if it's available, and <tt>beta</tt> if <tt>alpha</tt> is not available but <tt>beta</tt> is. You may optionally follow the match string by two times, in 24-hour format, in which case the entry applies only between those two times. For instance, <tt>default_selection Safety 1:30 2:30</tt> boots the entry called <tt>Safety</tt> by default between the hours of 1:30 and 2:30. These times are specified in whatever format the motherboard clock uses (local time or UTC). If the first value is larger than the second, as in <tt>23:00 1:00</tt>, it is interpreted as crossing midnight—11:00 PM to 1:00 AM in this example. The last <tt>default_selection</tt> setting takes precedence over preceding ones <i>if</i> the time value matches. Thus, you can set a main <tt>default_selection</tt> without a time specification and then set one or more others to override the main setting at specific times.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>include</tt></td>