<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 1/3/2014</p>
+<p>Last Web page update: 3/9/2014</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>
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+<li><b>0.7.8 (3/9/2014</b>—This version emphasizes changes to icon and banner graphics handling. Internally, rEFInd can now scale graphics, which previous versions could not do. To make use of this feature, three new <tt>refind.conf</tt> tokens now exist: <tt>big_icon_size</tt> and <tt>small_icon_size</tt> set the sizes of big (first-row OS) and small (second-row tool) icons; and <tt>banner_scale</tt> tells rEFInd to draw banners to a 1:1 scale (<tt>noscale</tt>, the default) or to scale the banner to fill the screen (<tt>fillscreen</tt>). See <a href="configfile.html#table1">Table 1 on the configuration page of this document</a> for more on these new options. I've also adjusted the post-installation script used by the RPM and Debian packages to search for existing Shim programs called <tt>shimx64.efi</tt>, not just <tt>shim.efi</tt> (as had been done before). This should help when installing a package on distributions that use the <tt>shimx64.efi</tt> filename, such as Ubuntu. Finally, I'm providing a preliminary set of Debian packaging files, which may help distribution maintainers to adopt rEFInd.</li>
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<li><b>0.7.7 (1/3/2014)</b>—A new configuration file token, <tt>windows_recovery_files</tt>, leads this list of changes; you can use it to specify files that boot Windows recovery tools. If you include the <tt>windows_recovery</tt> option on the <tt>showtools</tt> line, these files will then be represented by a small Windows recovery badge on the second row rather than as a full-sized OS loader, thus reducing clutter and making the purpose of this loader clearer. You can also now specify a complete path to <tt>dont_scan_files</tt> items, including a volume specifier. The <tt>use_graphics_for</tt>, <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt>, <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>, <tt>dont_scan_files</tt>, <tt>scan_driver_dirs</tt>, and <tt>windows_recovery_files</tt> tokens can all now accept <tt>+</tt> as their first option, which causes subsequent list items to be added to their defaults rather than replacing them. The configuration file can now be specified at program launch by passing a <tt>-c</tt> option, as in <tt>-c myconf.conf</tt>; you can use this feature to set up a manual boot stanza that launches rEFInd with modified boot options. Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with filesystem UUIDs that have already been seen. This is an effort to reduce clutter from such partitions that are components of RAID 1 arrays. The <tt>install.sh</tt> script now attempts to locate and mount an unmounted ESP when run under Linux. Finally, I've fixed a bug in both <tt>install.sh</tt> and <tt>mkrlconf.sh</tt> that caused the generated <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file to contain a stray line break and unnecessary <tt>PARTUUID=</tt> specification on some systems.</li>
<li><b>0.7.6 (12/15/2013)</b>—The biggest changes in this version relate to the <tt>default_selection</tt> setting. You can now provide multiple default selections by listing them <i>within quotes</i> and separated by commas, as in <tt>default_selection "ubuntu,fedora"</tt> which boots <tt>ubuntu</tt> if it's present and <tt>fedora</tt> if <tt>ubuntu</tt> is not present but <tt>fedora</tt> is. This should be helpful with removable disks. You can also include two times, in 24-hour format, following a <tt>default_selection</tt> specification, as in <tt>default_selection Maintenance 1:00 2:00</tt>, which boots <tt>Maintenance</tt> by default between 1:00 and 2:00. If another <tt>default_selection</tt> without a time specification preceded this line, the earlier one will still apply at other times. Another change to the main program is that you can now set <tt>screensaver -1</tt> to have rEFInd come up with its screen blanked. You'll probably want to combine this with a short <tt>timeout</tt> value to have rEFInd boot your default OS quickly unless you press a key first. Finally, I've added a new option to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script: <tt>--ownhfs <i>target_partition</i></tt>. This option is valid only under OS X. It installs rEFInd to an HFS+ volume that does <i><b>not</b></i> currently hold an OS X installation. The installation method differs from the usual rEFInd installation in that the result looks to the firmware more like an OS X installation. This makes rEFInd appear as an option in the firmware's own boot manager and it may help suspend-to-RAM operations.</li>