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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of 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 5/4/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.3.2</p>
  19
  20
  21 <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>
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  86
  87 <hr />
  88
  89 <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>
  90
  91 <hr />
  92
  93 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
  94
  95 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
  96
  97 <p>Without further ado, then, and in no particular order:</p>
  98
  99 <ul>
 100
 101 <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones I've
 102     made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 103     unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to add
 104     features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for bugs to
 105     get into the program. I can only test on a handful of systems with a
 106     limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you try rEFInd and run
 107     into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 108
 109 <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86 or
 110     <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its "About"
 111     screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd like to add detection for Itanium
 112     and ARM systems, but I have no way to test such changes.</li>
 113
 114 <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so rEFInd's
 115     boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have artistic talent
 116     and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel free to send it to
 117     me. I won't make any final decision about changes until at least June
 118     30 of 2012.</li>
 119
 120 <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 121     theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new theme
 122     for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not replace the
 123     icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen Icons package),
 124     but I may provide a way to make selecting a theme from one of several
 125     installed themes easy, and provide links to themes on this Web site (or
 126     even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more information
 127     on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a href="themes.html">Theming
 128     rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 129
 130 <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of various
 131     graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to version
 132     0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with 800x600 and
 133     smaller displays because of an inability to properly crop the graphics
 134     fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2, I've put a band-aid on
 135     this problem by reducing the field size so that it now works on 800x600
 136     displays, but smaller displays still suffer from this problem. This is
 137     just an example of the inflexibility of certain layout issues within
 138     rEFInd.</li>
 139
 140 <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple image
 141     sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file, rEFInd
 142     can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the desired size
 143     would be useful.</li>
 144
 145 <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if it
 146     would.</li>
 147
 148 <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot loader
 149     resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID from the
 150     partition data is harder than extracting the volume's label or counting
 151     up the filesystem numbers.</li>
 152
 153 <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders and/or
 154     initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the boot
 155     loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 156
 157 <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 158     BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I can
 159     see how it could be for some people.</li>
 160
 161 <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
 162     UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on Macs&mdash;or
 163     at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my UEFI-based PCs. (I
 164     have an idea about this, but haven't yet investigated it in detail. If
 165     you'd like to help on this, <a
 166     href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
 167     thoughts.)</li>
 168
 169 <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte Hybrid
 170     EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 171     <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 172     This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance: Changing
 173     the case of icon filename extensions (or various other parts of icon
 174     filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly "generic" ones; and
 175     rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the firmware sometimes
 176     returns an all-caps version of the filename, but other times returns
 177     the filename with the correct case, causing a mismatch if the path
 178     includes lowercase elements). Some of these problems can be overcome by
 179     converting both strings to be compared to one case before doing the
 180     comparison, but others aren't so easy, since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt>
 181     is being called internally to the EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to
 182     fix some of these problems. OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on
 183     just one EFI implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined
 184     to just let it go.</li>
 185
 186 <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 187     whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7. Unfortunately,
 188     I lack the hardware to test this.</li>
 189
 190 <li>The Page Up and Page Down keys work in a rather strange way&mdash;a
 191     result of an admittedly quick fix on my part to a problem with a data
 192     structure that makes implementation of scrolling harder than it ought
 193     to be.</li>
 194
 195 <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
 196     On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 197     fixed.</li>
 198
 199 <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for boot
 200     options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.</li>
 201
 202 <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot loader
 203     settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or change its
 204     icon.</li>
 205
 206 <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>, <tt>bless</tt>,
 207     or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot set would be
 208     useful.</li>
 209
 210 <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful. This
 211     would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk boot.
 212     Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be launched
 213     much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
 214
 215 <li>I'd like to find a way to have rEFInd re-scan removable media when
 216     they're inserted.</li>
 217
 218 <li>Enabling users to eject removable media would be useful.</li>
 219
 220 <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
 221     per-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
 222
 223 <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and similar
 224     problems.</p>
 225
 226 </ul>
 227
 228 <hr />
 229
 230 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 231
 232 <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>
 233
 234 <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>
 235
 236 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 237
 238 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 239
 240   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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