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<h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
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>
+3/1/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.8.7</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>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
+ extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
+ so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
+ x86-64.</li>
<li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.</li>
characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
monospace fonts.</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>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>
- </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
+ <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>
+
+ <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
+ rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
+ OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
+ single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
+ support files.</li>
+
+ <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
+ icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
+ distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
+ BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
+ booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
+ probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
+ loader files or boot sector code.</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.
have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
receiving a patch.</li>
+ <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
+ BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
+ additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
+ menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
+ extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
+ I haven't fully tracked it down.</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 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. Using
+ the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
+ cases.</li>
+
+ <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
+ multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
+ boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
<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>
stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
boot loader file.</li>
+ <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
+ detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
+ them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>
+
+ <li>Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
+ actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
+ complete keyboards.</li>
+
+ <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
+ that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
+ via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
+ to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
+ disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
+ cards.</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
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>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
- what the volume's real label is.</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>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
</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>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
+ external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
+ BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
+ makes it useless on those networks.</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 © 2012–2015 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>