<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 10/6/2012</p>
-
+<p>Last Web page update: 12/30/2012</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>
<ul>
+<li><b>0.6.2 (12/30/2012)</b>—This version's biggest changes are "behind-the-scenes" improvements. Specifically, I've completely re-worked the shim/MOK Secure Boot code, based largely on an approach used by James Bottomley in his PreLoader boot loader. This fixes some bugs, such as the inability to launch more than one EFI boot loader in Secure Boot mode. The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with GNU-EFI, which may help distribution maintainers. I'm also providing RPM packages of rEFInd, although I recommend installing from the binary zip file. Finally, I've changed rEFInd's default text-mode setting behavior to not adjust the text mode. (Recent previous versions forced the system to use text mode 0, which cuased problems on some systems.)</li>
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+<li><b>0.6.1 (12/21/2012)</b>—(Mayan apocalypse edition!) This version features a number of refinements and minor bug fixes. The <tt>install.sh</tt> script now includes a new <tt>--root</tt> option to enable easier installation of rEFInd to a regular OS installation from an emergency disc. The ext4fs driver now supports the <tt>meta_bg</tt> filesystem feature. I've fixed a number of obscure display resolution-setting bugs and a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying certain error messages but before prompting you to continue. Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label as the "from" location for a boot loader, rEFInd now describes the filesystem by its type (FAT, ext4fs, etc.) and/or size. rEFInd also now uses the filesystem label as a hint about what type of icon to display for a boot loader.</li>
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+<li><b>0.6.0 (12/16/2012)</b>—The donation of a working ext4fs driver from Stefan Agner has prompted another big jump in the rEFInd version number, since this driver will greatly simplify installation on many systems: You may be able to simply run the <tt>install.sh</tt> script to get a working rEFInd that boots your Linux kernels directly, bypassing GRUB or ELILO. Other improvements in this version include bug fixes and minor changes to <tt>install.sh</tt>, the addition of hint text to the rEFInd main menu, the ability to disable the options editor via the <tt>editor</tt> option to <tt>hideui</tt> in <tt>refind.conf</tt>, a new <tt>textmode</tt> option to <tt>refind.conf</tt> to set the size of the text-mode display, a change to the code that adds your initial RAM disk to the boot options so that if you specify one manually (via <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt>), it will take precedence, and assorted obscure bug fixes. The <tt>NEWS.txt</tt> file goes into more details about many of these changes, as do the relevant pages of this HTML documentation.</li>
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+<li><b>0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012)</b>—This is a micro-update to fix a bug in the <tt>install.sh</tt> script that prevented it from working under OS X. Aside from that, and a few small documentation changes, this version changes nothing in rEFInd.</li>
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+<li><b>0.5.1 (12/11/2012)</b>—The most important changes to this version are to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script. It now supports two options, <tt>--shim</tt> and <tt>--localkeys</tt>, to aid in installation on a Secure Boot system. See the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> and <a href="secureboot.html">Managing Secure Boot</a> pages for details. The script also now creates a sample <tt>/boot/refind_linux.conf</tt> file to assist in setting up boots via the Linux EFI stub loader. All of these <tt>install.sh</tt> improvements work only in Linux. A separate <tt>mkrlconf.sh</tt> script creates a <tt>/boot/refind_linux.conf</tt> file if it doesn't exist, for help in post-installation configuration. In rEFInd itself, I've fixed the bug that caused ELILO to be unable to locate its configuration file when launched in Secure Boot mode and fixed a couple of more obscure bugs. I've also added an <tt>include</tt> token to <tt>refind.conf</tt>, to enable you to create a secondary configuration file (say, one managed by scripts while leaving the main file untouched; or one dedicated to manual boot stanzas).</li>
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+<li><b>0.5.0 (12/6/2012)</b>—I've focused on adding support for Matthew J. Garrett's shim program to this version of rEFInd; with this support, rEFInd is capable of launching Linux kernels and other programs signed with a suitable key while the computer is in Secure Boot mode. This initial release, however, requires significant manual configuration and has some known bugs and limitations. See the <a href="secureboot.html">Managing Secure Boot</a> page for details. Beyond this major new feature, this version includes several more minor improvements. These include a change to the <tt>resolution</tt> token so that it applies to text mode as well as to graphics mode; a bug fix that caused the line editor to blank out lines that were left unedited; a new <tt>dont_scan_files</tt> option to blacklist boot programs by filename; support for launching MokManager and Apple's Recovery HD partitions via tools (2nd-row) icons; new <tt>--usedefault</tt> and <tt>--drivers</tt> options to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script; a change of the <tt>esp</tt> installation script option to <tt>--esp</tt>; and the ability to use quote marks inside option strings by doubling them up.</li>
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+<li><b>0.4.7 (11/6/2012)</b>—The most important new feature in this version is a boot options editor. From rEFInd's main menu, press Insert or F2 to see the options menu. Select one of the options and press Insert or F2 again and the screen switches to a text-mode display in which you can edit the options that will be passed to the boot loader. A second new feature is a new icon for <a href="http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/gummiboot">gummiboot,</a> which is another EFI boot manager. This version also alters the behavior of the <tt>scan_delay</tt> option, since I've been told that the previous version didn't work; the new one does. Finally, this version omits the space that followed boot options when booting most OSes. This behavior was inherited from rEFIt; a comment in the source code indicates it's needed by OS X, but I've been told it causes boot failures when launching Linux on some Macs. Thus, rEFInd now adds this space only when booting Mac OS X.</li>
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<li><b>0.4.6 (10/6/2012)</b>—Thanks to contributor John Bressler, rEFInd can now boot legacy (BIOS) boot loaders on many UEFI PCs. (Previously, rEFInd could do this only on Macs.) Other changes include a new <tt>scan_delay</tt> option that inserts a delay between rEFInd starting and disk scans (to help detect disks that are slow to appear to the firmware) and a change in the default <tt>scanfor</tt> value so that legacy OSes are detected by default on Macs (but not on PCs). I've also fixed some memory management problems that caused error messages to appear on some systems when rEFInd was compiled with the TianoCore EDK2 toolkit. Finally, I'm now using the TianoCore toolkit to make my primary binary builds, since the new UEFI legacy boot support requires the TianoCore environment. (rEFInd still builds with GNU-EFI, but it doesn't support booting legacy OSes on UEFI systems when built in this way.)</li>
<li><b>0.4.5 (8/12/2012)</b>—This version fixes a couple of Mac-related bugs. The most important is that version 0.4.3 and 0.4.4 couldn't boot BIOS-based (aka CSM or Boot Camp) OS installations; 0.4.5 restores this important feature. The second bug is in the <tt>install.sh</tt> script, which would often fail to detect rEFItBlesser, thus leaving it enabled and causing rEFInd to fail to start after the first reboot into OS X.</li>