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Update to NEWS.txt to note recent submission.
[refind] / NEWS.txt
1 0.10.5 (??/??/201?):
2 --------------------
3
4 - Fixes to touch/tablet support to improve reliability.
5
6 0.10.4 (10/9/2016):
7 -------------------
8
9 - Fixed compile problem for drivers with recent versions of GNU-EFI
10 (3.0.4, maybe 3.0.3).
11
12 - Fixed bug that could cause program crash on startup. (In practice, it
13 manifested with GNU-EFI starting with version 3.0.3 or 3.0.4.)
14
15 - An anonymous contributor has provided support for touch screens. This
16 support requires that the "enable_touch" token be used in refind.conf.
17 Note, however, that not all tablet computers have EFIs that provide the
18 necessary support in the firmware.
19
20 - Martin Whitaker contributed 64-bit support to the ext4fs driver, which
21 makes it compatible with ext4fs as written by some recent Linux
22 distributions.
23
24 - Tweaked refind-install to do a better job of detecting disks other
25 than /dev/sd? and /dev/hd? devices.
26
27 0.10.3 (4/24/2016):
28 -------------------
29
30 - Altered RPM & Debian installation scripts so as to NOT call sbsign if
31 Secure Boot is disabled. This is a response to Ubuntu bug #1574372
32 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sbsigntool/+bug/1574372): In
33 Ubuntu 16.04, the sbsign program is segfaulting randomly, which prevents
34 proper installation of the program. This change at least permits proper
35 installation IF Secure Boot is disabled.
36
37 - Changed description of BIOS/CSM/legacy OS loaders on Macs to include the
38 string "(Legacy)", so as to more easily identify BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode OSes
39 in the rEFInd main menu.
40
41 - Added recognition of the fwupx64.efi file as a firmware update tool.
42 This filename is excluded from the first-row launchers, and is instead
43 presented on the second row, controlled by the "fwupdate" item on the
44 "showtools" option line. It's enabled by default. Note that it's still a
45 bit unclear to me how this tool is supposed to be used. rEFInd launches it
46 with no options, but if it should take options, this will have to be
47 changed in the future.
48
49 - Tightened exclusion of shell binary filenames from boot loader scan.
50 Previously, any filename containing the substring "shell" was excluded
51 from scans. Now it's tighter; only files matching one of the filenames in
52 the constant SHELL_NAMES in main.c are excluded. This change will enable
53 programs with names that include "shell", but that aren't in rEFInd's
54 SHELL_NAMES list, such as "shelly.efi", to be shown in the rEFInd main
55 menu.
56
57 - Fixed bug in NTFS driver that caused it to hang (and thus hang the
58 computer) in some situations, particularly when a file on an NTFS volume
59 had many fragments and when the computer's CSM was activated. (Fix
60 courtesy of "S L.")
61
62 - Modified SIP/CSR rotation code: If the csr-active-config EFI variable is
63 missing AND the firmware is Apple (as identified by the string "Apple"
64 being present in the ST->FirmwareVendor string), rEFInd treats the
65 computer as one on which SIP is available and set to the "enabled" state
66 (0x10). The upshot is that the SIP/CSR tool will appear if the showtools
67 and csr_values options are set appropriately in refind.conf, even if the
68 csr-active-config variable is missing from the NVRAM. The point of this
69 change is that I've received reports of some Macs that run OS X 10.11 but
70 that lack this variable. OS X acts as if SIP were enabled, but rEFInd is
71 then unable to disable SIP. This change gives rEFInd the ability to
72 disable SIP on such systems. The drawback is that the variable might be
73 set on some systems that don't run OS X 10.11. This should be harmless
74 from a technical point of view, but the presence of SIP indicators in
75 rEFInd could be confusing.
76
77 - Added refind-mkdefault script to simplify resetting rEFInd as the default
78 boot program in Linux. The intent is to run this after GRUB, Windows, OS
79 X, or some other tool takes over as the primary boot manager. It can be
80 called from a startup script to handle this task automatically.
81
82 0.10.2 (1/26/2016):
83 -------------------
84
85 - Fixed bug in refind-install that caused mountesp to be installed as a FILE
86 called /usr/local/bin on OS X if the /usr/local/bin directory did not
87 already exist.
88
89 - Fixed bug in mvrefind that caused it to fail to move bootmgfw.efi in
90 some situations, and another that caused it to give the resulting NVRAM
91 entry the default rEFInd name of "rEFInd Boot Manager," rather than the
92 intended "Windows Boot Manager" (to work around bugs in some EFIs).
93
94 - Worked around bug/quirk in some EFIs (in HP ProBook 6470b laptop, at
95 least) that prevented EFI filesystem drivers from working. (Drivers would
96 load but not provide access to filesystems.)
97
98 - Fixed refind-install bug that caused --usedefault option to not work in OS
99 X. (This bug did not affect Linux.)
100
101 - Improved Secure Boot detection in refind-install in Linux.
102
103 - Fixed bug that caused custom volume badges (vol_*.png) to be read only
104 from default location ("icons" subdirectory), effectively eliminating the
105 ability to adjust them.
106
107 - Added centos.crt and centos.cer public key files.
108
109 0.10.1 (12/12/2015):
110 --------------------
111
112 - Change to PPA version: Installing the PPA now queries the user about
113 whether to install to the ESP. Upgrades will remember the initial
114 selection.
115
116 - Modified time-based sorting of loaders in a single directory to push
117 anything starting with "vmlinuz-0-rescue" to the end of the list. Fedora
118 gives its rescue kernels filenames that begin with that string, and if
119 such a kernel happens to be the most recent, treating it normally will
120 cause it to become the default when kernel folding is in use. This is
121 almost certainly undesirable, so this change keeps the rescue kernel at
122 the end of the list instead, which is saner.
123
124 - Significantly reworked the project's Makefiles. This should have no
125 impact on ordinary users, and even most developers should barely notice
126 it; but it should make future extensions to additional platforms or
127 building in different environments easier.
128
129 - Added workaround to gptsync for issue with some Macs' EFIs that caused
130 the program to skip through all prompts, thus accepting the default
131 option. This would normally cause gptsync to do nothing.
132
133 - Added type code 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage,
134 gdisk type AF05) to list of partition types recognized by gptsync.
135
136 - Removed Luxi Sans Mono font, since I discovered it was not open source;
137 and changed the default font from Nimbus Mono to Liberation Mono.
138
139 - Added support for compiling rEFInd for ARM64 (aka AARCH64 or aa64). This
140 works with both GNU-EFI and Tianocore UDK2014.SP1.P1. This support is
141 currently poorly tested. In particular, I used QEMU on an x86-64 computer
142 to create a virtualized ARM64 environment; I've not yet tested on a real
143 computer. I couldn't get QEMU to create a video card, so I used a serial
144 terminal, which means that the graphics features are untested -- I ran
145 rEFInd with "textonly" uncommented in refind.conf. I've tested the ext4fs
146 driver but no other drivers, although they all compile. (So does gptsync,
147 although it's unlikely to be useful on ARM64.) Some rEFInd features are
148 meaningless on ARM64, such as BIOS-mode boot support, anything geared
149 toward Macs (csr_values/csr_rotate, spoof_osx_version, etc.), and
150 enable_and_lock_vmx.
151
152 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan EFI boot loaders on
153 removable media when rEFInd itself was launched from the fallback
154 filename.
155
156 - Moved detailed descriptions of refind-install from installing.html to
157 a refind-install man page. To keep this information Web-accessible, I've
158 also created HTML versions of the three man pages and linked them into
159 the HTML documentation.
160
161 - Updated LodePNG to latest version (20151024).
162
163 - Fixed bugs in mkrlconf and in refind-install that could cause some kernel
164 options to be excluded from refind_linux.conf. There were two trouble
165 conditions:
166 - Previously, these scripts assumed that the first option in
167 /proc/cmdline was the kernel's filename, but this isn't always the
168 case. (In particular, when gummiboot launches the kernel, this is not
169 true. It might be an incorrect assumption in some other cases, too.)
170 The fix involves checking for likely signs of a kernel filename before
171 discarding this first option.
172 - These scripts cut the "initrd=*" option from /proc/cmdline, but the
173 call to "sed" was overzealous and cut until the end of input. This
174 usually worked, since the initrd= option was usually last on the line;
175 but if it wasn't, any options following initrd= would be lost.
176
177 - Added "kernel*" as a matching pattern for Linux kernels, since this is
178 what Gentoo uses by default.
179
180 - The refind-install script can now be run as a symbolic link in Linux.
181 This enables creating a /usr/sbin/refind-install link in Linux packages,
182 with the binaries stashed wherever the package system likes them. This
183 feature does NOT work in OS X, but there's relatively little need for it
184 there.
185
186 0.10.0 (11/8/2015):
187 -------------------
188
189 - Fixed bug that caused refind-install to not unmount the ESP when it
190 should under OS X.
191
192 - Modified refind-install and mkrlconf scripts to use /proc/cmdline as
193 source for default boot options EXCEPT when refind-install receives the
194 --root option. In that case, refind-install continues to use
195 /etc/default/grub as the source of default options. The idea behind this
196 change is that it's more reliable to get boot options from /proc/cmdline
197 when the targeted system is the one that's booted; but --root would be
198 used from emergency disks or live CDs, in which case the current boot
199 options would be completely wrong, so extracting boot options from GRUB
200 files is the best bet for getting close to the right options.
201
202 - Added "@/boot" to default also_scan_dirs setting. This makes kernels
203 show up on Btrfs volumes under Ubuntu (and perhaps others), at least when
204 the Btrfs driver is loaded.
205
206 - Added new System Integrity Protection (SIP) rotation feature for Macs
207 running OS X 10.11 or later. This feature is disabled by default, except
208 on CD-R and USB flash drive images, on which it's enabled. To enable it,
209 you must make TWO changes to refind.conf: Uncomment the new "csr_values"
210 item and add "csr_rotate" to the "showtools" line (uncommenting it, too,
211 if it's commented out). If desired, you can set more values on
212 "csr_values"; these are comma-delimited one-byte hexadecimal values that
213 define various SIP states. When SIP/CSR rotation is activated, a new
214 shield icon appears among the tools. Selecting it causes the next defined
215 value to be set and a confirmation message to appear for three seconds.
216
217 - Added display of current System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode to
218 "About" display.
219
220 - Added mountesp script for OS X to (you guessed it!) mount the ESP.
221
222 - Renamed support scripts: install.sh to refind-install, mvrefind.sh to
223 mvrefind, and mkrlconf.sh to mkrlconf.
224
225 - New icons! The old ones were getting to be a jumbled mess of styles,
226 particularly for OS tags. I used the AwOken icon set
227 (http://alecive.deviantart.com/art/AwOken-163570862) for the core icons,
228 then expanded from there by creating my own icons and modifying icons for
229 Debian and Elementary OS. I'm also trying to keep better track of
230 copyrights and licenses on icons. Between that and some icons being for
231 OSes that probably see very little use (FreeDOS and eComstation, for
232 instance), a few OS icons have been lost. If you prefer the old icons,
233 you can continue to use them by upgrading rEFInd, renaming icons-backup
234 to something else (say, icons-classic), and then adding an "icons" line
235 in refind.conf to point to the old icons directory.
236
237 - Changed from .zip to .tar.gz as source code archive format. I did this
238 because Linux is the only officially-supported build platform, and
239 tarballs are a more natural fit to a Linux environment. I'm leaving .zip,
240 .deb, and .rpm files as the formats for binary packages.
241
242 - Added detection of System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless") mode
243 to OS X portion of install.sh script. When detected, and if no existing
244 rEFInd installation is found, the script now prints a warning and brief
245 instructions of how to enter the Recovery mode to install rEFInd and
246 suggests aborting the installation. (The user can override and attempt
247 installation anyhow.) If SIP is detected along with an existing rEFInd
248 installation, the script moderates the warning and explains that an
249 update of a working rEFInd will probably succeed, but that re-installing
250 to fix a broken rEFInd will probably fail.
251
252 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
253 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
254 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
255 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
256 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
257 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
258 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
259
260 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
261 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
262 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
263 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
264 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
265 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
266 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
267 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
268 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
269 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
270 workaround.)
271
272 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
273 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
274 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
275 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
276 boot.
277
278 0.9.2 (9/19/2015):
279 ------------------
280
281 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
282 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
283 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
284 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
285 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
286 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
287 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
288 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
289 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
290 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
291 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
292
293 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
294 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
295 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
296 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
297 Secure Boot db list.
298
299 0.9.1 (9/13/2015):
300 ------------------
301
302 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
303 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
304 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
305 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
306 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
307 or "ro" option to the kernel.
308 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
309 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
310 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
311 system has more than one with the correct type code.
312
313 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
314 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
315 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
316 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
317 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
318 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
319 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
320 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
321 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
322
323 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
324 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
325 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
326 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
327
328 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
329
330 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
331 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
332 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
333 closely-related distributions.
334
335 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
336 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
337 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
338 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
339 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
340 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
341 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
342 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
343 potentially buggy system calls.
344
345 0.9.0 (7/26/2015):
346 ------------------
347
348 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
349
350 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
351 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
352 EDK2.)
353
354 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
355 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
356 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
357 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
358 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
359 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
360 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
361 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
362
363 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
364 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
365 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
366 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
367 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
368 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
369 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
370 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
371 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
372
373 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
374 file was encountered.
375
376 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
377 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
378 under OS X.
379
380 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
381 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
382 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
383
384 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
385 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
386 IA32.
387
388 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
389 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
390 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
391 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
392 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
393 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
394
395 0.8.7 (3/1/2015):
396 -----------------
397
398 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
399 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
400 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
401
402 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
403
404 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
405 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
406 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
407
408 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
409 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
410
411 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
412 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
413 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
414 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
415 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
416 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
417
418 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
419 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
420 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
421 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
422 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
423
424 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
425 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
426 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
427 such as the ASUS T100.)
428
429 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
430 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
431 of the efitools package.
432
433 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
434
435 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
436
437 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
438 itself.
439
440 0.8.6 (2/8/2015):
441 -----------------
442
443 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
444 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
445 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
446
447 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
448 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
449 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
450 used universally.
451
452 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
453 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
454 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
455 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
456
457 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
458 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
459 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
460
461 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
462 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
463
464 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
465 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
466
467 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
468 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
469 selection images to fail to load.
470
471 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
472 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
473
474 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
475 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
476
477
478 0.8.5 (2/1/2015):
479 -----------------
480
481 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
482
483 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
484
485 - Changes to
486
487 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
488
489 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
490 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
491 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
492 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
493 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
494 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
495 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
496 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
497
498 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
499
500 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
501 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
502 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
503 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
504 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
505
506 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
507 from other than the first hard disk.
508
509
510 0.8.4 (12/8/2014):
511 ------------------
512
513 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
514 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
515 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
516
517 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
518
519 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
520 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
521 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
522 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
523
524 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
525 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
526 mode.
527
528 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
529 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
530 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
531 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
532
533 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
534 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
535 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
536
537 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
538 building and basic use instructions).
539
540 0.8.3 (7/6/2014):
541 -----------------
542
543 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
544 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
545 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
546 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
547 is displayed.
548
549 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
550 distribution.
551
552 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
553 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
554 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
555
556 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
557 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
558 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
559 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
560 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
561 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
562 change its license to a BSD license.
563
564 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
565 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
566 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
567
568 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
569 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
570 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
571 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
572 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
573 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
574 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
575 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
576 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
577 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
578 and ensure it's set to "false".
579
580 0.8.2.1 (6/8/2014):
581 -------------------
582
583 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
584 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
585
586 0.8.2 (6/8/2014):
587 -----------------
588
589 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
590 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
591 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
592 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
593 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
594 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
595 loader in the
596 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
597 variable under Linux.
598
599 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
600
601 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
602 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
603
604 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
605 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
606
607 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
608 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
609 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
610 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
611 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
612 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
613 override a setting in the main file).
614
615 0.8.1 (5/15/2014):
616 ------------------
617
618 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
619 on the root directory of a partition.
620
621 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
622 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
623
624 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
625 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
626 second.
627
628 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
629 screens.
630
631 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
632 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
633 firmware).
634
635 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
636 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
637 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
638 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
639 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
640 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
641 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
642 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
643
644 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
645 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
646 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
647 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
648 volume and is used by OS X.
649
650 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
651 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
652
653 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
654 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
655
656 0.8.0 (5/4/2014):
657 -----------------
658
659 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
660 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
661 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
662 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
663 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
664
665 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
666
667 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
668 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
669 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
670 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
671
672 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
673 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
674 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
675 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
676 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
677 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
678
679 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
680 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
681 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
682
683 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
684 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
685
686 0.7.9 (4/20/2014):
687 ------------------
688
689 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
690 some Macs.
691
692 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
693 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
694 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
695
696 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
697 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
698
699 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
700
701 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
702 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
703 drivers.
704
705 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
706 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
707 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
708
709 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
710 utility."
711
712
713 0.7.8 (3/9/2014):
714 -----------------
715
716 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
717 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
718 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
719 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
720 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
721 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
722 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
723
724 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
725 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
726 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
727 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
728 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
729 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
730 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
731 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
732
733 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
734 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
735 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
736 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
737 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
738 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
739
740 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
741 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
742 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
743 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
744 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
745
746 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
747 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
748 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
749 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
750 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
751 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
752 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
753 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
754 problems might arise.
755
756 0.7.7 (1/3/2014):
757 -----------------
758
759 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
760 dont_scan_files.
761
762 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
763
764 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
765 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
766 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
767 utility on the second row of icons.
768
769 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
770 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
771 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
772 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
773 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
774
775 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
776 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
777 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
778
779 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
780 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
781 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
782 UUID.
783
784 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
785 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
786
787 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
788 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
789 under some circumstances.
790
791 0.7.6 (12/15/2013):
792 -------------------
793
794 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
795 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
796 default_selection "fred,ginger"
797 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
798 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
799
800 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
801 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
802 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
803 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
804 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
805 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
806 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
807 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
808 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
809 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
810 depending on your computer.
811
812 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
813 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
814 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
815 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
816 screensaver will be disabled.
817
818 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
819 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
820 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
821 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
822 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
823
824 0.7.5 (11/10/2013):
825 -------------------
826
827 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
828 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
829
830 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
831 versions of OS X to fail.
832
833 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
834 drivers were present.
835
836 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
837 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
838 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
839 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
840 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
841 black a second or so later.
842
843 0.7.4.1 (8/25/2013):
844 --------------------
845
846 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
847 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
848 problem.
849
850 0.7.4 (8/25/2013):
851 ------------------
852
853 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
854 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
855 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
856
857 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
858 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
859 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
860 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
861 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
862 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
863 default.
864
865 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
866 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
867 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
868 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
869
870 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
871 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
872 known case, but there may be others.)
873
874 0.7.3 (8/7/2013):
875 -----------------
876
877 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
878 loaders on Macs.
879
880 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
881
882 0.7.2 (8/6/2013):
883 -----------------
884
885 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
886 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
887
888 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
889 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
890
891 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
892 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
893
894 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
895 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
896 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
897 HashTool-signed.efi".
898
899 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
900
901 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
902 was broken.
903
904 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
905 was broken.
906
907 0.7.1 (7/8/2013):
908 -----------------
909
910 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
911
912 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
913 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
914 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
915
916 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
917 volume specification, if present.
918
919 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
920
921 0.7.0 (6/27/2013):
922 ------------------
923
924 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
925 type for volumes that lack labels.
926
927 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
928 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
929 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
930 though.
931
932 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
933 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
934 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
935 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
936 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
937 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
938 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
939 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
940
941 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
942 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
943 non-EFI loaders, etc.
944
945 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
946 code.
947
948 0.6.12 (6/18/2013):
949 -------------------
950
951 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
952 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
953
954 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
955 script.
956
957 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
958 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
959 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
960 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
961
962 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
963 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
964 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
965 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
966
967 0.6.11 (5/13/2013):
968 -------------------
969
970 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
971 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
972 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
973 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
974
975 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
976
977 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
978 directory names that contain spaces.
979
980 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
981 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
982 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
983 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
984 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
985
986 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
987 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
988
989 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
990 Utility" in menu.
991
992 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
993 partitions to fill the MBR.
994
995 0.6.10 (5/5/2013):
996 ------------------
997
998 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
999 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
1000 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
1001 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
1002
1003 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
1004 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
1005 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
1006 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
1007 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
1008
1009 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
1010 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
1011 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
1012 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
1013 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
1014 is quietly ignored.
1015
1016 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
1017 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
1018
1019 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
1020 encountered when saving a screen shot.
1021
1022 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
1023 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
1024 sequence number, starting with "001".
1025
1026 0.6.9 (4/25/2013):
1027 ------------------
1028
1029 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
1030 Kemperman.
1031
1032 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
1033 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
1034
1035 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
1036 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
1037 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
1038
1039 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
1040 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
1041 accidentally trash their systems.
1042
1043 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
1044 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
1045 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
1046
1047 0.6.8 (3/18/2013):
1048 ------------------
1049
1050 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
1051 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
1052
1053 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
1054 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
1055
1056 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
1057 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
1058
1059 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
1060
1061 0.6.7 (2/3/2013):
1062 -----------------
1063
1064 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
1065 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
1066
1067 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
1068 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
1069 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
1070 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
1071
1072 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
1073 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
1074
1075 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
1076 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1077
1078 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
1079 also_scan_dirs list.
1080
1081 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
1082
1083 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
1084 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
1085 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
1086
1087 0.6.6 (1/26/2013):
1088 ------------------
1089
1090 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1091 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
1092 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
1093 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
1094 loader under the fallback name.
1095
1096 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
1097 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
1098 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
1099 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
1100 of 96 glyphs.
1101
1102 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
1103 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
1104
1105 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
1106 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
1107
1108 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
1109 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
1110 commented out or empty.
1111
1112 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
1113 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
1114
1115 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
1116 manual boot stanzas.
1117
1118 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
1119 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
1120
1121 0.6.5 (1/16/2013):
1122 ------------------
1123
1124 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
1125 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
1126
1127 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
1128
1129 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
1130
1131 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
1132 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
1133
1134 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
1135
1136 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
1137 sized to cover these areas.
1138
1139 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
1140 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
1141 resolution!
1142
1143 0.6.4 (1/8/2013):
1144 -----------------
1145
1146 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
1147 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
1148 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
1149 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
1150
1151 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
1152 startup on some systems.
1153
1154 0.6.3 (1/6/2013):
1155 -----------------
1156
1157 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
1158 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
1159
1160 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
1161 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
1162
1163 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
1164 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
1165 burned to USB flash disks.
1166
1167 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
1168 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
1169 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
1170
1171 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
1172 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
1173 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
1174 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
1175 from that installation.
1176
1177 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
1178 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
1179 than in EFI/refind.
1180
1181 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
1182 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
1183
1184 0.6.2 (12/30/2012):
1185 -------------------
1186
1187 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
1188 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
1189 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
1190
1191 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
1192 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
1193 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
1194 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
1195 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
1196
1197 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
1198 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
1199 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
1200 Linux with the "make" command.
1201
1202 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
1203 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
1204
1205 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
1206 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
1207 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
1208 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
1209 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
1210 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
1211 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
1212 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
1213
1214 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
1215 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
1216 default.)
1217
1218 0.6.1 (12/21/2012):
1219 -------------------
1220
1221 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
1222 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
1223 use on emergency discs.
1224
1225 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
1226 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
1227 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
1228 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
1229 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
1230 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
1231 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
1232 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
1233 handle.
1234
1235 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
1236
1237 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
1238 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
1239 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
1240 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
1241 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
1242 os_GENTOO.icns.
1243
1244 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
1245 mode.
1246
1247 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1248 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1249 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1250 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1251
1252 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1253 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1254 a boot loader launch failed.
1255
1256 0.6.0 (12/16/2012):
1257 -------------------
1258
1259 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1260 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1261 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1262 options.
1263
1264 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1265 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1266 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1267 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1268
1269 - Added ext4fs driver!
1270
1271 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1272
1273 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1274
1275 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1276 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1277
1278 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1279 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1280 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1281 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1282 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1283 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1284 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1285 mode.
1286
1287 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1288 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1289 display even in graphics mode.
1290
1291 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1292 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1293
1294 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1295 disables the boot options editor.
1296
1297 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1298 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1299
1300 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1301 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1302 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1303
1304 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1305 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1306
1307 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1308 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1309 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1310 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1311 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1312 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1313
1314 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1315 on Linux systems.
1316
1317 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1318 ---------------------
1319
1320 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1321
1322 0.5.1 (12/11/2012):
1323 -------------------
1324
1325 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1326 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1327 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1328 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1329
1330 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1331 configuration file from a primary one.
1332
1333 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1334 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1335 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1336 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1337 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1338 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1339 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1340 LVM.)
1341
1342 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1343 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1344
1345 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1346 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1347 refind.conf.
1348
1349 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1350 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1351
1352 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1353 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1354 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1355
1356 0.5.0 (12/6/2012):
1357 ------------------
1358
1359 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1360 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1361 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1362 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1363 option:
1364 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1365
1366 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1367 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1368 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1369 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1370 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1371 for them makes sense.
1372
1373 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1374 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1375 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1376 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1377
1378 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1379 were not actually edited.
1380
1381 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1382 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1383 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1384 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1385 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1386
1387 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1388 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1389 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1390 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1391 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1392 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1393 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1394 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1395
1396 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1397 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1398 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1399
1400 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1401 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1402 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1403
1404 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1405 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1406 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1407 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1408
1409 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1410 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1411 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1412
1413 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1414 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1415
1416 0.4.7 (11/6/2012):
1417 ------------------
1418
1419 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1420
1421 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1422 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1423 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1424
1425 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1426 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1427 told isn't working as planned).
1428
1429 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1430 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1431 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1432 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1433
1434 0.4.6 (10/6/2012):
1435 ------------------
1436
1437 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1438
1439 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1440 for disks.
1441
1442 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1443 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1444 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1445 done this for two reasons:
1446 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1447 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1448 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1449 default for them should help them.
1450 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1451 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1452 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1453 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1454 default configurations.
1455
1456 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1457
1458 0.4.5 (8/12/2012):
1459 ------------------
1460
1461 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1462
1463 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1464
1465 0.4.4 (6/23/2012):
1466 ------------------
1467
1468 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1469 32-bit systems.
1470
1471 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1472 on 32-bit systems.
1473
1474 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1475 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1476 loaders/OSes.
1477
1478 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1479
1480 0.4.3 (6/21/2012):
1481 ------------------
1482
1483 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1484 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1485
1486 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1487 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1488 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1489 graphics or text mode itself.)
1490
1491 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1492 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1493 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1494 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1495 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1496 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1497 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1498
1499 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1500
1501 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1502 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1503 "linux.conf" themselves.
1504
1505 0.4.2 (6/3/2012):
1506 -----------------
1507
1508 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1509 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1510 via rEFInd.
1511
1512 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1513 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1514 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1515 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1516 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1517 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1518 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1519 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1520 the boot order).
1521
1522 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1523 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1524
1525 0.4.1 (5/25/2012):
1526 ------------------
1527
1528 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1529 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1530 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1531 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1532 system hasn't hung.
1533
1534 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1535 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1536
1537 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1538
1539 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1540 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1541 label.)
1542
1543 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1544 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1545
1546 0.4.0 (5/20/2012):
1547 ------------------
1548
1549 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1550 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1551 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1552 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1553 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1554 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1555 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1556
1557 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1558 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1559 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1560
1561 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1562 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1563 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1564 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1565
1566 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1567 file when launched from rEFInd.
1568
1569 0.3.5 (5/15/2012):
1570 ------------------
1571
1572 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1573 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1574
1575 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1576 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1577 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1578 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1579 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1580 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1581
1582 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1583 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1584
1585 0.3.4 (5/9/2012):
1586 -----------------
1587
1588 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1589 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1590 sample configuration file for a full description.
1591
1592 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1593 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1594 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1595 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1596 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1597
1598 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1599 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1600 target).
1601
1602 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1603 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1604
1605 0.3.3 (5/6/2012):
1606 -----------------
1607
1608 - Improved menu navigation:
1609 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1610 down arrows move between rows.
1611 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1612 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1613 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1614 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1615
1616 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1617 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1618 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1619
1620 0.3.2 (5/4/2012):
1621 -----------------
1622
1623 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1624 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1625 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1626 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1627 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1628 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1629 will fail to work.
1630
1631 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1632 mode.
1633
1634 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1635
1636 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1637 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1638 options.
1639
1640
1641 0.3.1 (4/27/2012):
1642 ------------------
1643
1644 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1645 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1646
1647 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1648 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1649 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1650 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1651 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1652 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1653 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1654 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1655 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1656 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1657 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1658
1659 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1660 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1661 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1662 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1663 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1664
1665 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1666 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1667
1668 0.3.0 (4/22/2012):
1669 ------------------
1670
1671 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1672 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1673 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1674 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1675 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1676 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1677
1678 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1679 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1680 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1681 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1682 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1683 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1684 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1685 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1686 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1687 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1688 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1689 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1690 that resets the video mode.
1691
1692 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1693 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1694 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1695 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1696 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1697 details.
1698
1699 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1700 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1701 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1702 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1703 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1704 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1705
1706 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1707 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1708 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1709
1710 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1711 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1712 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1713 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1714
1715 0.2.7 (4/19/2012):
1716 ------------------
1717
1718 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1719 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1720 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1721 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1722 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1723 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1724 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1725 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1726 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1727 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1728 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1729 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1730 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1731 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1732 installation.
1733
1734 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1735
1736 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1737 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1738 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1739 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1740 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1741 directories you like.
1742
1743 0.2.6 (4/14/2012):
1744 ------------------
1745
1746 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1747 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1748 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1749 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1750 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1751 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1752 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1753 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1754
1755 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1756 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1757 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1758
1759 0.2.5 (4/9/2012):
1760 -----------------
1761
1762 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1763 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1764
1765 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1766 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1767 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1768 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1769 documented the name....
1770
1771 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1772 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1773 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1774
1775 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1776 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1777 directory) on certain systems.
1778
1779 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1780 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1781
1782 0.2.4 (4/5/2012):
1783 -----------------
1784
1785 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1786 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1787 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1788 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1789 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1790 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1791 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1792 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1793 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1794 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1795 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1796 to me.
1797
1798 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1799 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1800 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1801 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1802 simultaneously.)
1803
1804 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1805 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1806
1807 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1808 image.
1809
1810 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1811 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1812 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1813 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1814 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1815
1816 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1817 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1818 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1819 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1820 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1821 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1822
1823 0.2.3 (3/26/2012):
1824 ------------------
1825
1826 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1827 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1828 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1829 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1830 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1831 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1832 small sample of computers.
1833
1834 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1835 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1836 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1837 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1838 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1839
1840 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1841
1842 0.2.2 (3/23/2012):
1843 ------------------
1844
1845 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1846 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1847 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1848 versionless initrd file.
1849
1850 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1851 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1852 continues.
1853
1854 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1855 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1856 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1857
1858 0.2.1 (3/19/2012):
1859 ------------------
1860
1861 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1862 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1863 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1864 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1865
1866 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1867 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1868 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1869 directory as the kernel.
1870
1871 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1872 entries in refind.conf file.
1873
1874 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1875 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1876
1877
1878 0.2.0 (3/14/2012):
1879 ------------------
1880
1881 - Initial public release