code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/getting.html

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   3   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
   4
   5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   6 <head>
   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
   8   <link href="../Styles/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
   9 </head>
  10
  11 <body>
  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  18 1/6/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.3</p>
  19
  20 <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>
  21
  22 <table border="1">
  23 <tr>
  24 <td>Donate $1.00</td>
  25 <td>Donate $2.50</td>
  26 <td>Donate $5.00</td>
  27 <td>Donate $10.00</td>
  28 <td>Donate another value</td>
  29 </tr>
  30 <tr>
  31 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  32 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
  33 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  34 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  35 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  36 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
  37 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
  38 </form>
  39
  40 </td>
  41 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  42 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
  43 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  44 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  45 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  46 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="2.50">
  47 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
  48 </form>
  49
  50 </td>
  51 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  52 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
  53 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  54 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  55 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  56 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="5.00">
  57 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
  58 </form>
  59
  60 </td>
  61 <td><form name="_xclick" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  62 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
  63 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  64 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  65 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  66 <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00">
  67 <input type="image" src="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
  68 </form>
  69
  70 </td>
  71 <td>
  72 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  73 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  74 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">
  75 <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
  76 <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
  77 <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  78 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="rEFInd Boot Manager">
  79 <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donate_LG.gif:NonHostedGuest">
  80 <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
  81 <img alt="Donate with PayPal" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
  82 </form>
  83 </td></tr>
  84 </table>
  85
  86 <hr />
  87
  88 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
  89
  90 <hr />
  91
  92 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>beta-quality software!</i> I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every few days. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
  93
  94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  95
  96 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:</p>
  97
  98 <ul>
  99
 100 <li><b><a
 101     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind-src-0.6.3.zip/download">A
 102     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to compile
 103     the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 104     href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
 105     Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary packages (below),
 106     although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
 107     development tools are also supported.</li>
 108
 109 <li><b><a
 110     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind-bin-0.6.3.zip/download">A
 111     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 112     rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
 113     computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
 114     optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
 115     and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
 116     Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
 117     href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 118
 119 <li><b><a
 120     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind-0.6.3-2.x86_64.rpm/download">A
 121     binary RPM file</a></b>&mdash;If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64
 122     Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
 123     package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
 124     equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the <tt>install.sh</tt>
 125     script (described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing
 126     rEFInd</a> page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
 127     maintainers can examine the <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source
 128     package and tweak it to their needs. The <a
 129     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind-0.6.3-2.src.rpm/download">source
 130     RPM file</a> might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
 131     on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
 132     files.</li>
 133
 134 <li><b><a
 135     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind_0.6.3-2_amd64.deb/download">A
 136     binary Debian package</a></b>&mdash;If you use an <i>x</i>86-64 version
 137     of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
 138     install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
 139     package using <tt>alien</tt>.</li>
 140
 141 <!--
 142 <li><b><a
 143     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 144     binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
 145     like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
 146     development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
 147     that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
 148     develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
 149     (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
 150     TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
 151     either build.)</li>
 152 -->
 153
 154 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.</p>
 155
 156 <li><b><a
 157     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.3/refind-cd-0.6.3.zip/download">A
 158     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 159     the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
 160     (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
 161     UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
 162     copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
 163     such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
 164     or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
 165     shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
 166     so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
 167     don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
 168     be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
 169     shell.</li>
 170
 171 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 172     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 173     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 174     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 175     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 176     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 177     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 178
 179 </ul>
 180
 181 <p>If you're using a platform other than <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
 182
 183 <p>To extract the files from the zip file images I've provided, you'll need a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
 184
 185 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
 186
 187 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 188
 189 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
 190
 191 <ul>
 192
 193 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
 194     repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
 195     installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
 196     rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
 197     name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
 198     pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
 199     poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
 200     Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
 201     UEFI-based PCs.</li>
 202
 203 <li><b><a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/">Fat
 204     Dog</a></b>&mdash;This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
 205     rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
 206     provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.</li>
 207
 208 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
 209     collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
 210     OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
 211
 212 <li><b>Slackware</b>&mdash;Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
 213     build, <a href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this
 214     site</a> has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
 215     14.0.</li>
 216
 217 </ul>
 218
 219 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
 220
 221 <hr />
 222
 223 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 224
 225 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
 226
 227 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
 228
 229 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 230
 231 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 232
 233   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 234 </body>
 235 </html>