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<h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Revisions</h1>
<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 12/8/2014</p>
+<p>Last Web page update: 7/26/2015</p>
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<ul>
+<li><b>0.9.0 (7/26/2015</b>—This version gets a bump up to 0.9.0 mainly because of a highly user-visible new feature: <i>kernel folding.</i> With kernel folding active, multiple Linux kernels in a single directory appear as just one main-menu entry, which launches the most recent kernel (by file timestamp) by default. Older kernels appear on the first one's submenu (accessed by hitting F2 or Insert). You can disable this new feature by setting <tt>fold_linux_kernels false</tt> in <tt>refind.conf</tt>. Another new feature is support for the <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/">Discoverable Partitions Spec,</a> which enables rEFInd to locate the Linux root (<tt>/</tt>) partition without a <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> or <tt>/etc/fstab</tt> entry. I know of no distribution that automatically sets up its partitions in this way, but if and when this starts to happen, rEFInd will be ready. Other changes are relatively minor: The Debian <tt>postinst</tt> script now calls <tt>install.sh</tt> with <tt>--localkeys</tt> if <tt>sbsign</tt> and <tt>openssl</tt> are available, which helps if using the Ubuntu PPA on a system with custom Secure Boot keys; I've fixed a packaging bug that prevented IA32 versions of filesystem drivers and <tt>gptsync</tt> to not be built in the PPA; <tt>mkrlconf.sh</tt> now refuses to run under OS X; rEFInd now skips checking for BIOS-mode boot code on UEFI-based PCs, which should speed it up a little; I've fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to crash if it found an existing but empty <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file; I've made minor code changes to enable rEFInd to build under GCC 5.1; and I've added a new icon for Kali Linux (provided by Francesco D'Eugenio).</li>
+
+<li><b>0.8.7 (3/1/2015)</b>—This release provides bug fixes and refinements to existing features. Several changes should reduce the odds of rEFInd crashing because of assorted problems. Other changes improve Secure Boot handling, including improved Secure Boot detection in <tt>install.sh</tt>, recognition of <tt>KeyTool.efi</tt> and <tt>KeyTool-signed.efi</tt> as MOK manager utilities, and reporting of Secure Boot status for <i>x</i>86 (IA-32) systems in the rEFInd information screen. Filesystem detection is improved (again), and XFS has been added as a known filesystem. Detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode boot loader is improved, which should give more Mac users the right OS icon when booting FreeBSD in BIOS mode. A bug in <tt>install.sh</tt> that caused inappropriate installation to the filename <tt>bootx64.efi</tt> or <tt>bootia32.efi</tt>, and failure to update the computer's boot list, has been squashed. Finally, I'm <i><b>deprecating</b></i> the use of <tt>fs<tt class="variable">x</tt>:</tt> notation for referring to filesystems. The numbering of filesystems is simply unreliable, and better alternatives (the use of partition GUIDs, partition names, and filesystem names) have been added in previous releases. The <tt>fs<tt class="variable">x</tt>:</tt> code remains in rEFInd, and if it's working for you, you can continue to use it; but sooner or later I'll remove that code, so you're advised to change your manual boot stanzas and other options that use it before that happens.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.8.6 (2/8/2015)</b>—Most (but not all) of this release's changes focus on Windows dual-booting and Mac-specific issues. There's a new Windows 8 icon, which is now used by default as the Windows icon, although the old icon remains available and is used for Windows XP and earlier boots on Macs. If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd will now exclude non-bootable NTFS volumes from the Mac boot list (this change does not affect UEFI-based PCs). A bug that caused misidentification of whole disks and NTFS volumes as being FAT has been fixed (again, this problem affected Macs, not PCs). A couple of Mac-specific <tt>install.sh</tt> bugs have been fixed, resulting in more reliable identification of the ESP and of the installation directory. Previous versions ignored a volume name of "HFS+ volume" because that name was produced by earlier versions of the rEFInd HFS+ driver for all HFS+ volumes; but the current HFS+ driver produces a real volume name, so I've removed that special case from the code. I've removed the r472 rEFIt commit, introduced in 0.8.5, because it was causing some BMP files to fail to load. Finally, the <tt>hideui</tt> token in <tt>refind.conf</tt> now accepts a value of <tt>badges</tt>, which has the effect of hiding the disk-type badges associated with OS launch icons.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.8.5 (2/1/2015)</b>—The biggest single change with this version is a new NTFS driver contributed by Samuel Liao, who also contributed the Btrfs driver. Samuel also contributed some miscellaneous driver fixes and a change to the way the keyboard is handled, which improves responsiveness on some systems. This version also improves the way <tt>install.sh</tt> works under OS X. In particular, it tweaks the <tt>bless</tt> command in a way that may eliminate startup delays and it does a better job of detecting and replacing existing rEFInd installations (on the ESP), rather than blindly writing to <tt>EFI/BOOT</tt>. Finally, this version applies <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refit/code/commit_browser">commits from late in rEFIt's history:</a> r467, which improves handling of BIOS/legacy boots from the second and subsequent disks on Macs; and r472, which enables handling BMP images that are not vertically flipped. These commits were not present in rEFInd from the start because the starting point for rEFInd was a Debian source package taken from a slightly earlier version.</li>
+
<li><b>0.8.4 (12/8/2014)</b>—OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") made changes that necessitated alterations to both rEFInd's <tt>install.sh</tt> script and rEFInd defaults. Specifically, Yosemite now uses a form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_volume_management">logical volume management (LVM)</a> that makes installing rEFInd to the OS X root directory impossible, so the default location is changed to the ESP. Changes to the default for <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> are necessary to make the new location for the OS X boot loader show up. Another big change is in the new (but <i>experimental</i>) support for network booting, with the help of iPXE. See the <tt>BUILDING.txt</tt> file in the source package for details on how to build and install the necessary files. A new option for <tt>refind.conf</tt>, <tt>enable_and_lock_vmx</tt>, sets the VMX bit on Intel CPUs, which is necessary for booting some hypervisors, such as Hyper-V. This feature can be set on many computers' EFIs, but some, such as Macs, lack this ability. (<i>Do not</i> set this option on AMD CPUs or older Intel CPUs that lack this feature, though!) If rEFInd can't find its icons directory, it now drops back to text mode. A bug in <tt>dont_scan_files</tt> has been fixed, enabling you to specify a complete path to certain special-case boot loaders to omit them from scans. Finally, I've updated the icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.</li>
<li><b>0.8.3 (7/6/2014)</b>—This version introduces a number of minor bug fixes and feature improvements. The most user-visible of these are that on Macs, rEFInd now displays a partition's label for BIOS-bootable OSes on filesystems that rEFInd can't read; and you can now pass <tt>timeout = -1</tt> in <tt>refind.conf</tt> to have rEFInd boot the default OS immediately <i>unless</i> there's a keypress when rEFInd loads, in which case that keypress is read as a shortcut key. A change that's less likely to be noticed is that the default setting for <tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt> is now <tt>true</tt>. Since this option had been uncommented in the sample configuration file, this change will not affect most people. I've fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers as soon as they were loaded. This didn't affect rEFInd's drivers because they ignored the relevant EFI calls; but this was preventing some other drivers from working. I've added two new icons, one for Mythbuntu and the other for the Clover boot manager. Finally, I've removed Oracle's GPLv2 code from the core filesystem driver code, since it was incompatible with the GPLv3 used by the Btrfs driver. This change <i>shouldn't</i> affect the operation of the drivers, but there's a slim chance that it will.</li>
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-<p>copyright © 2012–2014 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>