Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-9/13/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.9.1
+4/24/2016, referencing rEFInd 0.10.3
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!
Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for x86
- or x86-64 systems and displays this information in its
- "About" screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd
- like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
- way to test such changes.
+
rEFInd's Makefiles and, to a lesser extent, C code,
+ support x86, x86-64, and ARM64 CPUs. EFI is also
+ available for Itanium (IA-64) and ARM32 CPUs, so I'd like to add
+ this support.
+
+
Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for x86,
+ x86-64, or ARM64 systems and displays this information in
+ its "About" screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd
+ like to add detection for Itanium and 32-bit ARM systems, but I
+ have no way to test such changes.
Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
@@ -239,6 +238,19 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
remission.
+
Another Mac-specific display problem relates to "retina" displays:
+ Some users report that rEFInd comes up in a lower resolution than
+ the screen supports, and that this setting persists into the running
+ OS X instance, and can't be adjusted using the usual OS X means.
+ Unfortunately, I lack the hardware necessary to experiment and find
+ a solution to this problem within rEFInd. Thus, a fix will have to
+ wait for me to get my hands on such hardware (which is not on my
+ immediate purchase list) or until somebody with such hardware and
+ the necessary skills submits a fix. (Note that a fix could
+ conceivably involve passing options to the OS X boot loader or
+ something else that would require trivial or no changes to
+ rEFInd.)
+
Some EFIs have bugs that cause the allegedly case-insensitive
StriCmp() function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
@@ -331,6 +343,12 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
+
Currently, debugging rEFInd requires adding Print()
+ statements to the code. Adding a logging facility that supports
+ multiple log levels and writes the output to a file would help with
+ debugging, especially when dealing with problem reports from
+ users.
+
There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
can see how it could be for some people.
@@ -382,6 +400,10 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
major OSes.
+
The ability to produce audio output (at least a simple "beep") to signal
+ to visually impaired users when rEFInd is ready to accept input would be
+ helpful.
+
Improvements to the EFI drivers:
@@ -431,7 +453,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
-
+
@@ -58,8 +57,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
-
-