From 71f1ea86f5e97c4da1adadcc62685c4030f2d740 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: srs5694
Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 4/19/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -25,49 +25,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comI've used rEFIt on a couple of computers for over a year, but I've found that it has some frustrating limitations. It tends to flood the screen with non-functional BIOS boot options, for instance; and it has a number of bugs on UEFI-based systems. I therefore expanded on rEFIt, giving rEFInd features that improve on or go beyond those of rEFIt, such as:
+rEFInd expands on rEFIt by providing features that improve on or go beyond those of rEFIt, such as:
On the flip side, at least for Mac users, rEFInd comes with less sophisticated Mac installation tools than does rEFIt, in favor of more OS-agnostic packaging.
diff --git a/docs/refind/getting.html b/docs/refind/getting.html index 0faf42f..c3cb9bf 100644 --- a/docs/refind/getting.html +++ b/docs/refind/getting.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -F + @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ F href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -25,49 +25,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comThis page describes rEFInd, my fork of the rEFIt boot manager for computers based on the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and Unified EFI (UEFI). Like rEFIt, rEFInd is a boot manager, meaning that it presents a menu of options to the user when the computer first starts up, as shown below. rEFInd is not a boot loader, which is a program that loads an OS kernel and hands off control to it. Many popular boot managers, such as the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB), are also boot loaders, which can blur the distinction in many users' minds. rEFInd, though, relies on a separate boot loader to finish the handoff to an OS; it just presents a pretty menu and gives you options for how to proceed prior to booting an OS. All EFI-capable OSes include boot loaders, so this limitation isn't a problem. If you're using Linux, you should be aware that several EFI boot loaders are available, so choosing between them can be a challenge. See my Web page on this topic for more information.
+This page describes rEFInd, my fork of the rEFIt boot manager for computers based on the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and Unified EFI (UEFI). Like rEFIt, rEFInd is a boot manager, meaning that it presents a menu of options to the user when the computer first starts up, as shown below. rEFInd is not a boot loader, which is a program that loads an OS kernel and hands off control to it. Many popular boot managers, such as the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB), are also boot loaders, which can blur the distinction in many users' minds. rEFInd, though, relies on a separate boot loader to finish the handoff to an OS; it just presents a pretty menu and gives you options for how to proceed prior to booting an OS. All EFI-capable OSes include boot loaders, so this limitation isn't a problem. If you're using Linux, you should be aware that several EFI boot loaders are available, so choosing between them can be a challenge. In fact, the Linux kernel can function as an EFI boot loader for itself, which gives rEFInd characteristics similar to a boot loader for Linux. See my Web page on this topic for more information.
-In theory, EFI implementations should provide boot managers. Unfortunately, in practice these boot managers are often so poor as to be useless. The worst I've personally encountered is on Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI, which provides you with no boot options whatsoever, beyond choosing the boot device (hard disk vs. optical disc, for instance). I've heard of others that are just as bad. For this reason, a good EFI boot manager—either standalone or as part of a boot loader—is a practical necessity for multi-booting on an EFI computer. That's where rEFIt and rEFInd come into play.
-I decided to fork the earlier rEFIt project because, although rEFIt is a useful program, it's got several important limitations, such as poor control over the boot loader detection process and an ability to display at most a handful of boot loader entries on its main screen. I fixed a few of these bugs and released a patched version here; however, rEFIt's author, Christoph Pfisterer, didn't respond to my e-mails, and the latest official version of rEFIt, 0.14, was released in March of 2010. Thus, it appears that rEFIt has been abandoned. Forking the project to give rEFIt new features seemed like the thing to do.
+I decided to fork the earlier rEFIt project because, although rEFIt is a useful program, it's got several important limitations, such as poor control over the boot loader detection process and an ability to display at most a handful of boot loader entries on its main screen. Christoph Pfisterer, rEFIt's author, stopped updating rEFIt with version 0.14, which was released in March of 2010. Since I forked rEFIt to rEFInd, Christoph has begun pointing rEFIt users to rEFInd as a successor project.
The rEFIt Web page has a distinct Mac bias, and the provided binaries work only on Macs because they're 32-/64-bit "fat" binaries, which Macs can handle but UEFI-based PCs can't. rEFIt can be recompiled to work on UEFI-based PCs, but prebuilt binaries for such systems are relatively rare. Although I do own a Mac Mini, my interest lies more on the side of standard PC hardware, and hence with UEFI. My development platform is Linux, and my installation instructions and binaries are much more platform-neutral. I'm aware that many Mac users will consider this a step backward, but I ask their indulgence; I only have so many hours a week to work on this project, and I prefer to devote my efforts to improvements that will benefit all rEFInd users, at least initially.
diff --git a/docs/refind/installing.html b/docs/refind/installing.html index a34ca1d..db34db9 100644 --- a/docs/refind/installing.html +++ b/docs/refind/installing.html @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOriginally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comBeginning with version 0.6.2, I've included RPM and Debian package files for rEFInd. If you have a working RPM-based or Debian-based Linux installation that boots in EFI mode, using one of these files is likely to be the easiest way to install rEFInd: You need only download the file and issue an appropriate installation command. In some cases, double-clicking the package in your file manager will install it. If that doesn't work, a command like the following will install the RPM on an RPM-based system:
-# rpm -Uvh refind-0.6.8-1.x86_64.rpm+
# rpm -Uvh refind-0.6.9-1.x86_64.rpm
On a Debian-based system, the equivalent command is:
-# dpkg -i refind_0.6.8-1_amd64.deb+
# dpkg -i refind_0.6.9-1_amd64.deb
Either command produces output similar to that described for using the install.sh script, so you can check it for error messages and other signs of trouble. The package file installs rEFInd and registers it with the EFI to be the default boot loader. The script that runs as part of the installation process tries to determine if you're using Secure Boot, and if so it will try to configure rEFInd to launch using shim; however, this won't work correctly on all systems. Ubuntu 12.10 users who are booting with Secure Boot active should be wary, since the resulting installation will probably try to use Ubuntu's version of shim, which won't work correctly with rEFInd.
@@ -786,7 +824,7 @@ $ ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abirEFInd includes the ability to launch any EFI program; however, rEFInd detects only certain programs. These include boot loaders in traditional locations and a handful of other programs. To launch these other programs, you must download and install them separately from rEFInd:
+rEFInd includes the ability to launch any EFI program; however, rEFInd detects only certain programs. These include boot loaders in traditional locations and a handful of other programs. To launch most of these other programs, you must download and install them separately from rEFInd:
Originally written: 3/19/2012; last Web page update: -3/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.8
+4/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.9I'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!
@@ -26,49 +26,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comCKJzVUrk`$^lMXm0IMv&O
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