href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9</p>
+3/9/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.7.8</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>
+<p>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>
<table border="1">
<tr>
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
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>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.</li>
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>Along the lines of the previous item, the
+ <tt>default_selection</tt> 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>
+ <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
+ information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
+ upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
+ transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
<li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
<ul>
+ <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
+ some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
+ user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
+ that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
+ a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
+ removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
+ remission.</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.
<li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
similar problems.</li>
- <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array, rEFInd will detect
- kernels or boot loaders in RAID 1 twice. This could be fixed by
- adding a check for duplicate filesystem UUIDs to the
- partition-scanning code.</li>
+ <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
+ or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
+ RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
+ already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
+ duplication with more filesystems.</li>
+
+ <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
+ when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
+ test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
+ exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
+ href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
+ <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
+ <a
+ href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
+ by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
change its icon.</li>
+ <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
+ monitors would be helpful.</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
<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>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
+ are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
+ welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
+ BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
+ Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
+ for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
<li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
what the volume's real label is.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
+<li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
+ support tools:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
+ under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
+ partition table. Fix this.</li>
+
+ <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
+ package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
+ shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
+ to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
+ message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
+ that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
+ really the case.</li>
+
+ <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
+
+ </ul></li>
+
</ul>
<hr />
-<p>copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
+<p>copyright © 2012–2014 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>