X-Git-Url: https://code.delx.au/refind/blobdiff_plain/12cfc677aad6ab1519212ee74eae05b2d04b8dc6..293749865fc028016e6896402afd37d7021a5e48:/docs/refind/configfile.html diff --git a/docs/refind/configfile.html b/docs/refind/configfile.html index 74e51e1..583e601 100644 --- a/docs/refind/configfile.html +++ b/docs/refind/configfile.html @@ -14,8 +14,8 @@

by Roderick W. Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com

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Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 6/23/2012, -referencing rEFInd 0.4.4

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Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: +11/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.7

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!

@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ referencing rEFInd 0.4.4

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Many casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making further changes; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, refind.conf, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (refind.efi or whatever you've renamed it).

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Many casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making changes to its settings; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. On Macs, rEFInd also presents legacy BIOS boot options by default. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, refind.conf, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (refind.efi or whatever you've renamed it).

Broadly speaking, rEFInd's configuration file is broken down into two sections: global options and OS stanzas. The global options section sets options that apply globally—to set the timeout period, enable graphics or text mode, and so on. OS stanzas are optional, but if present, they enable you to add new boot options or replace the auto-detected options with customized ones. Both sections include configuration lines and comment lines, the latter being denoted by a leading hash mark (#). rEFInd ignores comment lines, so you can add explanatory text. The default configuration file includes numerous comments explaining each of the options.

@@ -98,7 +98,7 @@ referencing rEFInd 0.4.4

ESPs use the FAT filesystem, which is case-insensitive. Unfortunately, at least one EFI implementation (Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI) contains a bug that causes string comparisons that should be case-insensitive to actually be done in a case-sensitive way. This can cause files that are present to appear to be missing. rEFInd includes code to work around this bug in some situations, but not in all of them. If boot loaders appear to be missing, try changing the case on their filenames or on the EFI directory in the ESP. (It's coded as uppercase in rEFInd; but EFI loader filename extensions are coded as lowercase .efi. I made these choices because they seem to be the most common uses on real-world installations.)

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Before delving into the configuration file, you should be aware of what you can do by renaming files. By default, rEFInd scans all the filesystems it can read for boot loaders. It scans most of the subdirectories of the EFI directory on every filesystem it can access for files with names that end in .efi. (rEFIt gives special treatment to the TOOLS subdirectory, where it looks for system tools rather than boot loaders.)

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Before delving into the configuration file, you should be aware of what you can do by renaming files. By default, rEFInd scans all the filesystems it can read for boot loaders. It scans most of the subdirectories of the EFI directory on every filesystem it can access for files with names that end in .efi. (rEFInd gives special treatment to the tools subdirectory, where it looks for system tools rather than boot loaders.)

If you're like me, you may sometimes want to hide a boot loader from rEFInd's menu for a brief period—say, because you're testing a variety of configurations but you don't want them all to clutter the menu at once. You might also want to hide a boot loader if you want to override its default settings using a custom entry in refind.conf and you don't want an automatic search to duplicate that entry. You can easily hide a boot loader by removing or changing its .efi filename extension—for instance, changing grub.efi to grub.

@@ -170,8 +170,8 @@ timeout 20 showtools - shell, gptsync, about, exit, shutdown, and reboot - Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. shell launches an EFI shell, gptsync launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, about displays information about the program, exit terminates rEFInd, shutdown shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on UEFI PCs), and reboot reboots the computer. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is shell, about, shutdown, reboot. + shell, gptsync, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, exit, shutdown, and reboot + Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. shell launches an EFI shell, gptsync launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, apple_recovery boots the OS X Recovery HD, mok_tool launches a tool to manage Machine Owner Keys (MOKs) on systems with Secure Boot active, about displays information about the program, exit terminates rEFInd, shutdown shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on UEFI PCs), and reboot reboots the computer. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is shell, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, shutdown, reboot. Note that the shell, apple_recovery, mok_tool, and gptsync options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd. See the "Installing Additional Components" section of the Installing rEFInd page for pointers to the shell and gptsync programs. The apple_recovery option will appear only if you've got an Apple Recovery HD partition (which has a boot loader called com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi). See the Secure Boot page for information on Secure Boot and MOK management. textonly @@ -191,12 +191,17 @@ timeout 20 scan_driver_dirs directory path(s) - Scans the specified directory or directories for EFI driver files. If rEFInd discovers .efi files in those directories, they're loaded and activated as drivers. This option sets directories to scan in addition to the drivers subdirectory of the rEFInd installation directory, which is always scanned, if present. + Scans the specified directory or directories for EFI driver files. If rEFInd discovers .efi files in those directories, they're loaded and activated as drivers. This option sets directories to scan in addition to the drivers and drivers_arch subdirectories of the rEFInd installation directory, which are always scanned, if present. scanfor internal, external, optical, hdbios, biosexternal, cd, and manual - Tells rEFInd what methods to use to locate boot loaders. The internal, external, and optical parameters tell rEFInd to scan for EFI boot loaders on internal, external, and optical (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray) devices, respectively. The hdbios, biosexternal, and cd parameters are similar, but scan for BIOS boot loaders. (Note that the BIOS options are likely to be useless on UEFI PCs.) The manual parameter tells rEFInd to scan the configuration file for manual settings. You can specify multiple parameters to have the program scan for multiple boot loader types. When you do so, the order determines the order in which the boot loaders appear in the menu. The default is internal, external, optical. + Tells rEFInd what methods to use to locate boot loaders. The internal, external, and optical parameters tell rEFInd to scan for EFI boot loaders on internal, external, and optical (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray) devices, respectively. The hdbios, biosexternal, and cd parameters are similar, but scan for BIOS boot loaders. (Note that the BIOS options scan more thoroughly and actively on Macs than on UEFI-based PCs; for the latter, only options in the firmware's boot list are scanned, as described on the Using rEFInd page.) The manual parameter tells rEFInd to scan the configuration file for manual settings. You can specify multiple parameters to have the program scan for multiple boot loader types. When you do so, the order determines the order in which the boot loaders appear in the menu. The default is internal, external, optical, manual on most systems, but internal, hdbios, external, biosexternal, optical, cd, manual on Macs. + + + scan_delay + Numeric (integer) value + Imposes a delay before rEFInd scans for disk devices. Ordinarily this is not necessary, but on some systems, some disks (particularly external drives and optical discs) can take a few seconds to become available. If some of your disks don't appear when rEFInd starts but they do appear when you press the Esc key to re-scan, try uncommenting this option and setting it to a modest value, such as 2, 5, or even 10. The default is 0. also_scan_dirs @@ -206,17 +211,22 @@ timeout 20 dont_scan_dirs or don't_scan_dirs directory path(s) - Adds the specified directory or directories to a directory "blacklist"—these directories are not scanned for boot loaders. This may be useful to keep duplicate boot loaders out of the menu (say, if EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi is a duplicate of another boot loader); or to keep drivers or utilities out of the boot menu, if you've stored them in a subdirectory of EFI. This option takes precedence over also_scan_dirs; if a directory appears in both lists, it will not be scanned. + Adds the specified directory or directories to a directory "blacklist"—these directories are not scanned for boot loaders, on any partition. This may be useful to keep duplicate boot loaders out of the menu (say, if EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi is a duplicate of another boot loader); or to keep drivers or utilities out of the boot menu, if you've stored them in a subdirectory of EFI. This option takes precedence over also_scan_dirs; if a directory appears in both lists, it will not be scanned. + + + dont_scan_files or don't_scan_files + Filename(s) + Adds the specified filename or filenames to a filename "blacklist"—these files are not included as boot loader options even if they're found on the disk. This is useful to exclude support programs (such as shim.efi and MokManager.efi) and drivers from your OS list. The default value is shim.efi, MokManager.efi, TextMode.efi, ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi. scan_all_linux_kernels None - When set, causes rEFInd to add Linux kernels (files with names that begin with vmlinuz or bzImage) to the list of EFI boot loaders, even if they lack .efi filename extensions. The hope is that this will simplify use of rEFInd on distributions that provide kernels with EFI stub loader support but that don't give those kernels names that end in .efi. Of course, the kernels must still be stored on a filesystem that rEFInd can read, and in a directory that it scans. (Drivers and the also_scan_dirs options can help with those issues.) Note that this option can cause unwanted files to be improperly detected and given loader tags, such as older kernels without EFI stub loader support. For this reason, it's disabled by default. + When set, causes rEFInd to add Linux kernels (files with names that begin with vmlinuz or bzImage) to the list of EFI boot loaders, even if they lack .efi filename extensions. The hope is that this will simplify use of rEFInd on distributions that provide kernels with EFI stub loader support but that don't give those kernels names that end in .efi. Of course, the kernels must still be stored on a filesystem that rEFInd can read, and in a directory that it scans. (Drivers and the also_scan_dirs options can help with those issues.) Note that this option can cause unwanted files to be improperly detected and given loader tags, such as older kernels without EFI stub loader support. Versions of rEFInd prior to 0.5.0 left this option commented out in the refind.conf-sample file, but as of version 0.5.0, this option is enabled in the default configuration file. The program default remains to not scan for such kernels, though, so you can delete or uncomment this option to keep them from appearing in your boot menu. default_selection A substring of a boot loader's title; or a numeric position - Sets the default boot OS based on the loader's title, which appears in the main menu beneath the icons when you select the loader. You can enter any substring of the title as the default_selection, so long as it's two or more characters in length. It's best to use a unique substring, since rEFInd stops searching when it finds the first match. Because rEFInd sorts entries within a directory in descending order by file modification time, if you specify a directory (or volume name, for loaders in a partition's root directory) as the default_selection, the most recent loader in that directory will be the default. One-character entries are matched against the first character of the title, except for digits, which refer to the numeric order of the boot loader entries. (Note: In version 0.2.0, only the first character of this entry was used, and was matched against the first character of the title.) + Sets the default boot OS based on the loader's title, which appears in the main menu beneath the icons when you select the loader. You can enter any substring of the title as the default_selection, so long as it's two or more characters in length. It's best to use a unique substring, since rEFInd stops searching when it finds the first match. Because rEFInd sorts entries within a directory in descending order by file modification time, if you specify a directory (or volume name, for loaders in a partition's root directory) as the default_selection, the most recent loader in that directory will be the default. One-character entries are matched against the first character of the title, except for digits, which refer to the numeric order of the boot loader entries.