]> code.delx.au - refind/blob - NEWS.txt
Changes to enable rEFInd to build with GCC 5.1. Also some more
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.9.0 (6/??/2015):
2 ------------------
3
4 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
5 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
6 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
7 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
8 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
9 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
10 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
11 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
12
13 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
14 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
15 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
16 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
17 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
18 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
19 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
20 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
21 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
22
23 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
24 file was encountered.
25
26 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
27 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
28 under OS X.
29
30 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
31 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
32 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
33
34 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
35 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
36 IA32.
37
38 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
39 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
40 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
41 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
42 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
43 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
44
45 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
46 -----------------
47
48 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
49 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
50 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
51
52 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
53
54 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
55 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
56 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
57
58 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
59 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
60
61 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
62 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
63 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
64 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
65 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
66 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
67
68 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
69 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
70 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
71 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
72 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
73
74 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
75 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
76 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
77 such as the ASUS T100.)
78
79 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
80 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
81 of the efitools package.
82
83 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
84
85 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
86
87 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
88 itself.
89
90 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
91 -----------------
92
93 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
94 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
95 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
96
97 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
98 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
99 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
100 used universally.
101
102 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
103 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
104 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
105 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
106
107 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
108 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
109 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
110
111 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
112 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
113
114 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
115 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
116
117 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
118 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
119 selection images to fail to load.
120
121 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
122 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
123
124 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
125 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
126
127
128 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
129 -----------------
130
131 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
132
133 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
134
135 - Changes to
136
137 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
138
139 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
140 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
141 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
142 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
143 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
144 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
145 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
146 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
147
148 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
149
150 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
151 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
152 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
153 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
154 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
155
156 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
157 from other than the first hard disk.
158
159
160 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
161 ------------------
162
163 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
164 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
165 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
166
167 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
168
169 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
170 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
171 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
172 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
173
174 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
175 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
176 mode.
177
178 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
179 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
180 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
181 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
182
183 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
184 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
185 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
186
187 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
188 building and basic use instructions).
189
190 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
191 -----------------
192
193 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
194 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
195 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
196 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
197 is displayed.
198
199 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
200 distribution.
201
202 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
203 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
204 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
205
206 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
207 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
208 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
209 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
210 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
211 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
212 change its license to a BSD license.
213
214 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
215 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
216 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
217
218 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
219 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
220 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
221 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
222 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
223 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
224 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
225 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
226 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
227 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
228 and ensure it's set to "false".
229
230 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
231 -------------------
232
233 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
234 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
235
236 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
237 -----------------
238
239 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
240 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
241 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
242 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
243 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
244 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
245 loader in the
246 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
247 variable under Linux.
248
249 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
250
251 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
252 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
253
254 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
255 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
256
257 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
258 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
259 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
260 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
261 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
262 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
263 override a setting in the main file).
264
265 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
266 ------------------
267
268 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
269 on the root directory of a partition.
270
271 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
272 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
273
274 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
275 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
276 second.
277
278 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
279 screens.
280
281 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
282 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
283 firmware).
284
285 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
286 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
287 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
288 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
289 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
290 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
291 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
292 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
293
294 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
295 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
296 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
297 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
298 volume and is used by OS X.
299
300 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
301 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
302
303 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
304 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
305
306 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
307 -----------------
308
309 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
310 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
311 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
312 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
313 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
314
315 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
316
317 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
318 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
319 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
320 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
321
322 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
323 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
324 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
325 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
326 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
327 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
328
329 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
330 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
331 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
332
333 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
334 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
335
336 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
337 ------------------
338
339 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
340 some Macs.
341
342 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
343 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
344 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
345
346 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
347 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
348
349 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
350
351 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
352 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
353 drivers.
354
355 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
356 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
357 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
358
359 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
360 utility."
361
362
363 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
364 -----------------
365
366 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
367 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
368 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
369 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
370 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
371 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
372 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
373
374 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
375 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
376 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
377 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
378 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
379 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
380 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
381 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
382
383 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
384 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
385 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
386 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
387 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
388 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
389
390 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
391 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
392 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
393 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
394 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
395
396 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
397 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
398 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
399 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
400 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
401 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
402 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
403 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
404 problems might arise.
405
406 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
407 -----------------
408
409 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
410 dont_scan_files.
411
412 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
413
414 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
415 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
416 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
417 utility on the second row of icons.
418
419 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
420 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
421 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
422 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
423 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
424
425 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
426 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
427 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
428
429 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
430 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
431 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
432 UUID.
433
434 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
435 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
436
437 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
438 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
439 under some circumstances.
440
441 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
442 -------------------
443
444 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
445 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
446 default_selection "fred,ginger"
447 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
448 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
449
450 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
451 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
452 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
453 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
454 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
455 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
456 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
457 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
458 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
459 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
460 depending on your computer.
461
462 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
463 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
464 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
465 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
466 screensaver will be disabled.
467
468 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
469 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
470 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
471 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
472 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
473
474 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
475 -------------------
476
477 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
478 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
479
480 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
481 versions of OS X to fail.
482
483 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
484 drivers were present.
485
486 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
487 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
488 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
489 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
490 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
491 black a second or so later.
492
493 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
494 --------------------
495
496 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
497 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
498 problem.
499
500 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
501 ------------------
502
503 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
504 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
505 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
506
507 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
508 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
509 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
510 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
511 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
512 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
513 default.
514
515 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
516 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
517 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
518 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
519
520 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
521 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
522 known case, but there may be others.)
523
524 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
525 -----------------
526
527 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
528 loaders on Macs.
529
530 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
531
532 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
533 -----------------
534
535 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
536 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
537
538 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
539 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
540
541 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
542 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
543
544 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
545 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
546 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
547 HashTool-signed.efi".
548
549 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
550
551 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
552 was broken.
553
554 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
555 was broken.
556
557 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
558 -----------------
559
560 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
561
562 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
563 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
564 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
565
566 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
567 volume specification, if present.
568
569 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
570
571 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
572 ------------------
573
574 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
575 type for volumes that lack labels.
576
577 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
578 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
579 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
580 though.
581
582 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
583 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
584 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
585 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
586 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
587 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
588 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
589 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
590
591 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
592 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
593 non-EFI loaders, etc.
594
595 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
596 code.
597
598 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
599 -------------------
600
601 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
602 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
603
604 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
605 script.
606
607 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
608 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
609 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
610 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
611
612 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
613 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
614 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
615 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
616
617 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
618 -------------------
619
620 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
621 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
622 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
623 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
624
625 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
626
627 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
628 directory names that contain spaces.
629
630 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
631 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
632 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
633 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
634 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
635
636 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
637 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
638
639 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
640 Utility" in menu.
641
642 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
643 partitions to fill the MBR.
644
645 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
646 ------------------
647
648 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
649 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
650 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
651 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
652
653 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
654 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
655 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
656 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
657 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
658
659 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
660 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
661 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
662 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
663 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
664 is quietly ignored.
665
666 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
667 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
668
669 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
670 encountered when saving a screen shot.
671
672 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
673 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
674 sequence number, starting with "001".
675
676 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
677 ------------------
678
679 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
680 Kemperman.
681
682 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
683 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
684
685 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
686 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
687 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
688
689 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
690 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
691 accidentally trash their systems.
692
693 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
694 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
695 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
696
697 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
698 ------------------
699
700 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
701 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
702
703 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
704 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
705
706 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
707 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
708
709 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
710
711 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
712 -----------------
713
714 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
715 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
716
717 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
718 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
719 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
720 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
721
722 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
723 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
724
725 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
726 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
727
728 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
729 also_scan_dirs list.
730
731 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
732
733 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
734 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
735 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
736
737 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
738 ------------------
739
740 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
741 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
742 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
743 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
744 loader under the fallback name.
745
746 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
747 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
748 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
749 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
750 of 96 glyphs.
751
752 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
753 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
754
755 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
756 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
757
758 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
759 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
760 commented out or empty.
761
762 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
763 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
764
765 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
766 manual boot stanzas.
767
768 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
769 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
770
771 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
772 ------------------
773
774 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
775 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
776
777 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
778
779 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
780
781 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
782 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
783
784 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
785
786 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
787 sized to cover these areas.
788
789 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
790 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
791 resolution!
792
793 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
794 -----------------
795
796 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
797 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
798 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
799 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
800
801 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
802 startup on some systems.
803
804 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
805 -----------------
806
807 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
808 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
809
810 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
811 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
812
813 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
814 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
815 burned to USB flash disks.
816
817 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
818 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
819 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
820
821 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
822 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
823 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
824 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
825 from that installation.
826
827 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
828 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
829 than in EFI/refind.
830
831 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
832 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
833
834 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
835 -------------------
836
837 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
838 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
839 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
840
841 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
842 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
843 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
844 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
845 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
846
847 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
848 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
849 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
850 Linux with the "make" command.
851
852 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
853 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
854
855 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
856 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
857 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
858 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
859 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
860 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
861 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
862 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
863
864 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
865 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
866 default.)
867
868 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
869 -------------------
870
871 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
872 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
873 use on emergency discs.
874
875 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
876 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
877 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
878 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
879 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
880 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
881 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
882 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
883 handle.
884
885 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
886
887 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
888 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
889 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
890 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
891 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
892 os_GENTOO.icns.
893
894 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
895 mode.
896
897 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
898 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
899 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
900 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
901
902 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
903 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
904 a boot loader launch failed.
905
906 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
907 -------------------
908
909 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
910 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
911 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
912 options.
913
914 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
915 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
916 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
917 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
918
919 - Added ext4fs driver!
920
921 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
922
923 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
924
925 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
926 from a program that set the resolution itself.
927
928 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
929 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
930 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
931 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
932 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
933 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
934 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
935 mode.
936
937 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
938 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
939 display even in graphics mode.
940
941 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
942 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
943
944 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
945 disables the boot options editor.
946
947 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
948 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
949
950 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
951 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
952 from the /etc/default/grub file.
953
954 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
955 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
956
957 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
958 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
959 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
960 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
961 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
962 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
963
964 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
965 on Linux systems.
966
967 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
968 ---------------------
969
970 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
971
972 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
973 -------------------
974
975 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
976 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
977 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
978 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
979
980 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
981 configuration file from a primary one.
982
983 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
984 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
985 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
986 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
987 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
988 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
989 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
990 LVM.)
991
992 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
993 on systems with Secure Boot active.
994
995 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
996 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
997 refind.conf.
998
999 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1000 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1001
1002 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1003 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1004 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1005
1006 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1007 ------------------
1008
1009 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1010 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1011 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1012 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1013 option:
1014 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1015
1016 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1017 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1018 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1019 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1020 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1021 for them makes sense.
1022
1023 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1024 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1025 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1026 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1027
1028 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1029 were not actually edited.
1030
1031 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1032 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1033 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1034 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1035 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1036
1037 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1038 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1039 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1040 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1041 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1042 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1043 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1044 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1045
1046 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1047 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1048 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1049
1050 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1051 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1052 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1053
1054 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1055 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1056 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1057 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1058
1059 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1060 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1061 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1062
1063 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1064 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1065
1066 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1067 ------------------
1068
1069 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1070
1071 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1072 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1073 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1074
1075 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1076 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1077 told isn't working as planned).
1078
1079 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1080 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1081 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1082 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1083
1084 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1085 ------------------
1086
1087 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1088
1089 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1090 for disks.
1091
1092 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1093 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1094 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1095 done this for two reasons:
1096 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1097 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1098 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1099 default for them should help them.
1100 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1101 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1102 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1103 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1104 default configurations.
1105
1106 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1107
1108 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1109 ------------------
1110
1111 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1112
1113 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1114
1115 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1116 ------------------
1117
1118 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1119 32-bit systems.
1120
1121 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1122 on 32-bit systems.
1123
1124 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1125 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1126 loaders/OSes.
1127
1128 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1129
1130 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1131 ------------------
1132
1133 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1134 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1135
1136 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1137 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1138 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1139 graphics or text mode itself.)
1140
1141 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1142 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1143 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1144 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1145 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1146 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1147 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1148
1149 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1150
1151 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1152 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1153 "linux.conf" themselves.
1154
1155 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1156 -----------------
1157
1158 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1159 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1160 via rEFInd.
1161
1162 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1163 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1164 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1165 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1166 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1167 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1168 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1169 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1170 the boot order).
1171
1172 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1173 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1174
1175 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1176 ------------------
1177
1178 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1179 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1180 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1181 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1182 system hasn't hung.
1183
1184 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1185 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1186
1187 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1188
1189 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1190 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1191 label.)
1192
1193 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1194 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1195
1196 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1197 ------------------
1198
1199 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1200 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1201 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1202 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1203 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1204 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1205 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1206
1207 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1208 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1209 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1210
1211 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1212 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1213 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1214 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1215
1216 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1217 file when launched from rEFInd.
1218
1219 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1220 ------------------
1221
1222 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1223 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1224
1225 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1226 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1227 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1228 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1229 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1230 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1231
1232 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1233 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1234
1235 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1236 -----------------
1237
1238 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1239 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1240 sample configuration file for a full description.
1241
1242 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1243 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1244 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1245 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1246 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1247
1248 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1249 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1250 target).
1251
1252 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1253 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1254
1255 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1256 -----------------
1257
1258 - Improved menu navigation:
1259 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1260 down arrows move between rows.
1261 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1262 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1263 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1264 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1265
1266 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1267 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1268 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1269
1270 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1271 -----------------
1272
1273 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1274 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1275 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1276 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1277 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1278 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1279 will fail to work.
1280
1281 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1282 mode.
1283
1284 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1285
1286 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1287 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1288 options.
1289
1290
1291 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1292 ------------------
1293
1294 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1295 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1296
1297 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1298 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1299 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1300 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1301 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1302 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1303 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1304 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1305 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1306 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1307 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1308
1309 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1310 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1311 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1312 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1313 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1314
1315 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1316 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1317
1318 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1319 ------------------
1320
1321 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1322 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1323 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1324 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1325 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1326 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1327
1328 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1329 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1330 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1331 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1332 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1333 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1334 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1335 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1336 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1337 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1338 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1339 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1340 that resets the video mode.
1341
1342 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1343 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1344 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1345 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1346 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1347 details.
1348
1349 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1350 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1351 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1352 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1353 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1354 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1355
1356 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1357 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1358 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1359
1360 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1361 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1362 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1363 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1364
1365 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1366 ------------------
1367
1368 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1369 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1370 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1371 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1372 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1373 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1374 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1375 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1376 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1377 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1378 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1379 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1380 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1381 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1382 installation.
1383
1384 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1385
1386 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1387 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1388 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1389 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1390 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1391 directories you like.
1392
1393 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1394 ------------------
1395
1396 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1397 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1398 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1399 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1400 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1401 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1402 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1403 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1404
1405 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1406 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1407 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1408
1409 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1410 -----------------
1411
1412 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1413 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1414
1415 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1416 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1417 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1418 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1419 documented the name....
1420
1421 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1422 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1423 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1424
1425 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1426 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1427 directory) on certain systems.
1428
1429 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1430 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1431
1432 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1433 -----------------
1434
1435 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1436 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1437 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1438 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1439 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1440 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1441 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1442 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1443 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1444 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1445 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1446 to me.
1447
1448 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1449 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1450 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1451 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1452 simultaneously.)
1453
1454 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1455 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1456
1457 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1458 image.
1459
1460 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1461 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1462 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1463 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1464 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1465
1466 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1467 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1468 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1469 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1470 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1471 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1472
1473 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1474 ------------------
1475
1476 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1477 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1478 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1479 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1480 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1481 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1482 small sample of computers.
1483
1484 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1485 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1486 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1487 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1488 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1489
1490 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1491
1492 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1493 ------------------
1494
1495 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1496 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1497 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1498 versionless initrd file.
1499
1500 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1501 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1502 continues.
1503
1504 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1505 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1506 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1507
1508 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1509 ------------------
1510
1511 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1512 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1513 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1514 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1515
1516 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1517 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1518 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1519 directory as the kernel.
1520
1521 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1522 entries in refind.conf file.
1523
1524 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1525 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1526
1527
1528 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1529 ------------------
1530
1531 - Initial public release