href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-5/20/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.0</p>
+6/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.12</p>
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<hr />
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
<ul>
+ <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
+ icons.</li>
+
<li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
"About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
way to test such changes.</li>
- <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of
- various graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to
- version 0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with
- 800x600 and smaller displays because of an inability to properly
- crop the graphics fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2,
- I've put a band-aid on this problem by reducing the field size so
- that it now works on 800x600 displays, but smaller displays still
- suffer from this problem. This is just an example of the
- inflexibility of certain layout issues within rEFInd.</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>
+
+ <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
+ use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
+ 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
+ <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>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
- UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
- Macs—or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
- UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
- work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, <a
- href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
- thoughts.)</li>
+ <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 know
+ how to fix the problem at the moment, though; I need both
+ documentation and access to an afflicted computer to do the
+ necessary work, and I have neither.</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
implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
let it go.</li>
- <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
- On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
- fixed.</li>
+ <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
+ PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
+ fixed.</li>
<li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
do it.</li>
+ <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
+ features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
+ but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
+ Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
+ causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
+ (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
+ unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
+ have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
+ receiving a patch.</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 re-scan feature renders the user interface immobile until
- the re-scan is complete. This is usually just a second or two,
- but it can be longer if an optical disc needs to be spun up.
- Adding a temporary "scanning media" notice would be helpful.</li>
+ <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
+ re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
+ nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
+ EFI.</li>
+
+ <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
+ re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
+ have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
+ caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
+ shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
+
+ <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
+ slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
+ in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
+ volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
+ /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
+ and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
<li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
- similar problems.</p>
+ 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>
</ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
<li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
- boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt>
- file.</li>
+ boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
+ One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
+ stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
+ boot loader file.</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
+ the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
+ and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
+
+ <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
+ A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
+ requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
+ only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
+ as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
+ written in C.</li>
<li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
change its icon.</li>
- <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>,
- <tt>bless</tt>, or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot
- set would be useful.</li>
-
- <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful.
- This would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk
- boot. Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be
- launched much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
+ <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
+ monitors would be helpful.</li>
- <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
- single-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</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
+ can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- New features -->
- <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
+<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
<ul>
- <li>The drivers I've built fail to load on a 32-bit Mac Mini; I get an
- "incompatible version" error message at an EFI shell, or an error
- code of 80000019 when rEFInd tries to load them. (These two
- messages are equivalent.) I suspect the problem is related to the
- EFI version 1.<i>x</i> used on the Mac, as opposed to UEFI
- 2.<i>x</i> used on PCs. I'm looking into the problem. In the
- meantime, if you have this problem, I recommend tracking down
- equivalent drivers from other sources. (See the <a
- href="drivers.html">drivers page</a> for some pointers.) I'd
- appreciate <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">hearing from
- you</a> if you have problems along these lines. Please tell me what
- type of computer you're using, and especially the firmware version
- data (from rEFInd's "about" screen). This may help me narrow down
- the cause.</li>
-
- <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are required. Given the recent
- shift to ext4fs, that should be the priority; however, other Linux
- filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
+ <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>
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.
+ 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>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
+ desirable.</li>
- <li>The driver installation procedure could be improved, perhaps by
- adding support for drivers to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script.
+ <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
+ one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
+ <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
+ computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
+ This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
+ since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
+ that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
<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>