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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17   <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 4/14/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.6</p>
  18
  19 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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  85 <hr />
  86
  87 <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>
  88
  89 <hr />
  90
  91 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>alpha-quality software!</i> Although rEFIt 0.14, upon which rEFInd is based, is beta-quality, I've changed a great deal of the code, and I'm still learning about it. I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every day or two. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
  92
  93 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  94
  95 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in three different forms:</p>
  96
  97 <ul>
  98
  99 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.6/refind-src-0.2.6.zip/download">A
 100     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
 101     compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 102     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
 103     tools. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to
 104     that toolchain is theoretically possible, but I've not attempted
 105     it.</li>
 106
 107 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.6/refind-bin-0.2.6.zip/download">A
 108     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install rEFInd on
 109     an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64 computer and have no need to test rEFInd
 110     first by booting it on an optical disc. This zip file package includes both
 111     <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32) and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T)
 112     versions of rEFInd. Which you install depends on your architecture, as
 113     described on the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 114
 115 <li><b><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.6/refind-cd-0.2.6.zip/download">A
 116     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as the
 117     zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd without installing it
 118     first. (It boots on UEFI PCs, but fails on at least some Macs.) If you like
 119     it, you can then copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files
 120     are named in such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit
 121     (<i>x</i>86-64) or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. Note that there's a
 122     bug that causes rEFInd to complain about invalid parameters while scanning
 123     various directories. You can safely ignore this message, but you'll need to
 124     press a key to dismiss it. I've included an open source EFI shell program on
 125     this disc that's not included in the binary zip file, so that you can access
 126     an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you don't have an EFI shell
 127     available from your regular hard disk.</li>
 128
 129 </ul>
 130
 131 <p>If you're using another platform, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
 132
 133 <p>If you download a zip file, you'll need to extract the files with a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
 134
 135 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
 136
 137 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 138
 139 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57632">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57966">git (experimental)</a> releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.</p>
 140
 141 <p>You can also obtain rEFInd from the <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages collection,</a> which creates packages for a number of OSes using its own packaging system.</p>
 142
 143 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
 144
 145 <hr />
 146
 147 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 148
 149 <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>
 150
 151 <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>
 152
 153 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 154
 155 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 156
 157   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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