X-Git-Url: https://code.delx.au/refind/blobdiff_plain/4ca76581f99a008d91d8e8a3b10b80be6cc118be..a9871b0532ef974ab83c95a62ff70dcb979c99b4:/docs/refind/getting.html
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-
+F
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href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-12/18/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.6.0
+3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
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!
@@ -93,30 +93,57 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge
-You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:
+You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:
- A
- source code zip file—This is useful if you want to
- compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the A
+ source code zip file—This is useful if you want to compile
+ the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the TianoCore EFI
- Development Kit 2 (EDK2) to build my binaries (below), although the
- GNU-EFI
- development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
- toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
- possible, but I've not attempted it.
+ Development Kit 2 (EDK2) to build my binary packages (below),
+ although the GNU-EFI
+ development tools are also supported.
- A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-bin-0.6.8.zip/download">A
binary zip file—Download this if you want to install
rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an x86 or x86-64
computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
optical disc. This zip file package includes both x86 (aka IA32)
and x86-64 (aka x64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the Installing rEFInd page.
+ href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd page. Some users of Arch
+ Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
+ with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a variant
+ package exists in which the x86-64 binary was compiled with
+ GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
+ users with this problem; but using GNU-EFI also means that this version
+ can't launch BIOS-mode OSes.
+
+- A
+ binary RPM file—If you use an RPM-based x86-64
+ Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
+ package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
+ equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the install.sh
+ script (described on the Installing
+ rEFInd page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
+ maintainers can examine the refind.spec file in the source
+ package and tweak it to their needs. The source
+ RPM file might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
+ on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
+ files.
+
+- A
+ binary Debian package—If you use an x86-64 version
+ of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
+ install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
+ package using alien.
-
+
- A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.8/refind-cd-0.6.8.zip/download">A
CD-R image file—This download contains the same files as
the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
(and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
@@ -148,6 +175,22 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
shell.
+
+
+- A
+ USB flash drive image file—Although you can create
+ your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
+ this version and copy it to your USB drive with dd or some
+ other low-level disk copying utility.
+
- Source code via
git—If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
@@ -180,22 +223,27 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
UEFI-based PCs.
+- ALT Linux—This RPM-based distribution is experimenting with
+ using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT developers haven't
+ yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a tricky and delicate
+ task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image), but they're working on
+ the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see this page
+ for details.
+
+- Fat
+ Dog—This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
+ rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
+ provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.
+
- The Nix Packages
collection—This site creates packages for a number of
OSes using its own packaging system.
-- OpenSUSE
- Build Service (OBS)—This site holds a binary x86-64 build
- of rEFInd that should install on any RPM-based distribution. It doesn't
- completely set up rEFInd, though; it just places the rEFInd files in
- the /usr/share/refind directory, and a copy of
- install.sh as /usr/sbin/refind_install.
- Unfortunately, the script makes assumptions about the locations of
- files and so is useless when files are moved around in this way. Thus,
- you'll need to install manually after installing this RPM, so you might
- as well download the rEFInd binary .zip file from Sourceforge
- instead.
+- Slackware—Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
+ build, this
+ site has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
+ 14.0.
@@ -203,7 +251,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
-copyright © 2012 by Roderick W. Smith
+copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith
This document is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.