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  14   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>
  15
  16   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  17 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  18
  19 <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
  20 7/26/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.9.0</p>
  21
  22
  23 <p>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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 126
 127 <hr />
 128
 129 <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>
 130
 131 <hr />
 132
 133 <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>
 134
 135 <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>
 136
 137 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
 138
 139 <ul>
 140
 141 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
 142
 143     <ul>
 144
 145     <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
 146         I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 147         unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
 148         add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
 149         bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
 150         systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
 151         try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 152
 153     <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 154         theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
 155         theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
 156         replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
 157         Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
 158         (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
 159         information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
 160         href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 161
 162     </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
 163
 164 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
 165
 166     <ul>
 167
 168     <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
 169         currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
 170         off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
 171         prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
 172         boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
 173         optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
 174         icons.</li>
 175
 176     <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
 177         or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
 178         "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
 179         like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
 180         way to test such changes.</li>
 181
 182     <li>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
 183         extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
 184         so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
 185         x86-64.</li>
 186
 187     <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
 188         purposes.</li>
 189
 190     <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
 191         use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
 192         characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
 193         monospace fonts.</li>
 194
 195     <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some
 196         form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
 197         optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
 198
 199     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 200         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 201         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 202
 203     <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
 204         information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
 205         upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
 206         transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>
 207
 208     <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
 209         rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
 210         OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
 211         single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
 212         support files.</li>
 213
 214     <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
 215         icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
 216         distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
 217         BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
 218         booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
 219         probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
 220         loader files or boot sector code.</li>
 221
 222 </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 223
 224 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 225
 226     <ul>
 227
 228     <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
 229         some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
 230         user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
 231         that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
 232         a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
 233         removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
 234         remission.</li>
 235
 236     <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
 237         Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 238         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 239         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 240         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 241         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 242         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 243         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 244         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 245         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
 246         problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
 247         to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
 248         since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
 249         EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
 250         OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
 251         implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
 252         let it go.</li>
 253
 254     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
 255         PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 256         fixed.</li>
 257
 258     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 259         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 260         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 261         do it.</li>
 262
 263     <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
 264         features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
 265         but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
 266         Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
 267         causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
 268         (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
 269         unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
 270         have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
 271         receiving a patch.</li>
 272
 273     <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
 274         BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
 275         additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
 276         menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
 277         extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
 278         I haven't fully tracked it down.</li>
 279
 280     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 281         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 282         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 283
 284     <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
 285         re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
 286         nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
 287         EFI.</li>
 288
 289     <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
 290         re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
 291         have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
 292         caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
 293         shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
 294
 295     <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
 296         slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
 297         in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
 298         volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
 299         /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
 300         and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
 301
 302     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 303         similar problems.</li>
 304
 305     <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
 306         or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
 307         RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
 308         already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
 309         duplication with more filesystems.</li>
 310
 311     <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
 312         when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
 313         test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
 314         exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
 315         href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
 316         <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
 317         <a
 318         href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
 319         by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using
 320         the <tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
 321         cases.</li>
 322
 323     <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
 324         multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
 325         boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>
 326
 327     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 328
 329 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 330
 331     <ul>
 332
 333     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 334         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 335         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 336
 337     <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 338         whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
 339         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
 340         understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
 341         installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
 342         See <a
 343         href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
 344         forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
 345
 346     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 347         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
 348         One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
 349         stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
 350         boot loader file.</li>
 351
 352     <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
 353         detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
 354         them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>
 355
 356     <li>Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
 357         actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
 358         complete keyboards.</li>
 359
 360     <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
 361         that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
 362         via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
 363         to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
 364         disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
 365         cards.</li>
 366
 367     <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
 368         information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
 369         disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
 370         the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
 371         and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
 372
 373     <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
 374         A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
 375         requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
 376         only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
 377         as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
 378         written in C.</li>
 379
 380     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 381         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 382         change its icon.</li>
 383
 384     <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
 385         monitors would be helpful.</li>
 386
 387     <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
 388         priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
 389         written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
 390         can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
 391
 392     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 393
 394 <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 395
 396     <ul>
 397
 398     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
 399         are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
 400         welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
 401         BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
 402         Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
 403         for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
 404
 405     <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
 406         to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
 407         desirable.</li>
 408
 409     <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
 410         one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
 411         <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
 412         computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
 413         This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
 414         since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
 415         that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
 416
 417     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 418
 419 <li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
 420     support tools:</b>
 421
 422     <ul>
 423
 424     <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
 425         under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
 426         partition table. Fix this.</li>
 427
 428     <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
 429         package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
 430         shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
 431         to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
 432         message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
 433         that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
 434         really the case.</li>
 435
 436     <li>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
 437         external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
 438         BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
 439         makes it useless on those networks.</li>
 440
 441     <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
 442
 443     </ul></li>
 444
 445 </ul>
 446
 447 <hr />
 448
 449 <p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2015 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 450
 451 <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>
 452
 453 <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>
 454
 455 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 456
 457 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 458
 459   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
 460 </body>
 461 </html>