4 - Added new System Integrity Protection (SIP) rotation feature for Macs
5 running OS X 10.11 or later. This feature is disabled by default. To
6 enable it, you must make TWO changes to refind.conf: Uncomment the new
7 "csr_values" item and add "csr_rotate" to the "showtools" line
8 (uncommenting it, too, if it's commented out). If desired, you can set
9 more values on "csr_values"; these are comma-delimited one-byte
10 hexadecimal values that define various SIP states. When SIP/CSR rotation
11 is activated, a new shield icon appears among the tools. Selecting it
12 causes the next defined value to be set and a confirmation message to
13 appear for three seconds.
15 - Added display of current System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode to
18 - Added mountesp script for OS X to (you guessed it!) mount the ESP.
20 - Renamed support scripts: install.sh to refind-install, mvrefind.sh to
21 mvrefind, and mkrlconf.sh to mkrlconf.
23 - New icons! The old ones were getting to be a jumbled mess of styles,
24 particularly for OS tags. I used the AwOken icon set
25 (http://alecive.deviantart.com/art/AwOken-163570862) for the core icons,
26 then expanded from there by creating my own icons and modifying icons for
27 Debian and Elementary OS. I'm also trying to keep better track of
28 copyrights and licenses on icons. Between that and some icons being for
29 OSes that probably see very little use (FreeDOS and eComstation, for
30 instance), a few OS icons have been lost. If you prefer the old icons,
31 you can continue to use them by upgrading rEFInd, renaming icons-backup
32 to something else (say, icons-classic), and then adding an "icons" line
33 in refind.conf to point to the old icons directory.
35 - Changed from .zip to .tar.gz as source code archive format. I did this
36 because Linux is the only officially-supported build platform, and
37 tarballs are a more natural fit to a Linux environment. I'm leaving .zip,
38 .deb, and .rpm files as the formats for binary packages.
40 - Added detection of System Integrity Protection (SIP; aka "rootless") mode
41 to OS X portion of install.sh script. When detected, and if no existing
42 rEFInd installation is found, the script now prints a warning and brief
43 instructions of how to enter the Recovery mode to install rEFInd and
44 suggests aborting the installation. (The user can override and attempt
45 installation anyhow.) If SIP is detected along with an existing rEFInd
46 installation, the script moderates the warning and explains that an
47 update of a working rEFInd will probably succeed, but that re-installing
48 to fix a broken rEFInd will probably fail.
50 - Added new "spoof_osx_version" token, which takes an OS X version number
51 (such as "10.9") as an option. This feature, when enabled, causes rEFInd
52 to tell a Mac's firmware that the specified version of OS X is being
53 launched. This option is usually unnecessary, but it can help properly
54 initialize some hardware -- particularly secondary video devices. OTOH,
55 on some Macs it can cause hardware (notably keyboards and mice) to become
56 unresponsive, so you should not use this option unnecessarily.
58 - Worked around an EFI bug that affected my 32-bit Mac Mini: That system
59 seems to have a broken EFI, or possibly a buggy CPU, that causes some
60 (but not all) conversions from floating-point to integer numbers to hang
61 the computer. Such operations were performed only in rEFInd's
62 graphics-resizing code, and so would manifest only when icons or
63 background images were resized. My fix eliminates the use of
64 floating-point operations in the affected function, which eliminates the
65 crashes. There may be some degradation in the quality of resized images,
66 though, particularly on 32-bit systems. (64-bit systems use larger
67 integers, which enable greater precision in my floating-point
70 - Under OS X, install.sh can now be run from the recovery system. This may
71 help work around OS X 10.11's problems with System Integrity Protection,
72 since it should be possible to reboot into the recovery system to install
73 rEFInd without disabling SIP for the main installation, even for just one
79 - Added "--keepname" option to install.sh. This option causes install.sh
80 to keep refind_x64.efi named as such rather than rename it as grubx64.efi
81 when using Shim. This option is meaningful only if the --shim option is
82 also used. This option passes the refind_x64.efi filename as an option to
83 Shim, which overrides the default filename of grubx64.efi. A big caveat:
84 Only Shim 0.7 and later supports this feature. (Shim 0.4 also works if a
85 refind_x64.efi is referred to as "\refind_x64.efi" on the command line,
86 but the need for a leading backslash to refer to a file in the same
87 directory as Shim is so confusing and wrong that I cannot in good
88 conscience support it.) I've not seen signed Shim binaries between 0.4
89 and 0.7, so I don't know if any of them might work.
91 - Implemented a workaround for a bug in Shim 0.8 that prevented
92 authentication of more than one binary. If any filesystem drivers were
93 installed, the first one would be verified, leaving rEFInd unable to
94 launch anything else unless it was signed by a key in the computer's main
100 - When rEFInd identifies the root (/) partition via the Freedesktop.org
101 Discoverable Partitions Specification, it now checks two of the
102 partition's attributes, as per the DPS (see
103 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
104 - The partition's read-only attribute determines whether to pass a "rw"
105 or "ro" option to the kernel.
106 - If the partition's do-not-automount flag is set, rEFInd will not pass
107 it as a "root=" option to the kernel. This flag can be used to remove
108 all but one partition from consideration as a root (/) partition if a
109 system has more than one with the correct type code.
111 - Improved Freedesktop.org Discoverable Partitions Specification support:
112 Previously, if no refind_linux.conf file was present but an /etc/fstab
113 file was found, rEFInd ignored the Discoverable Partitions Specification
114 filesystem-type codes. This was fine if /etc/fstab contained a valid "/"
115 filesystem specification, but if that was absent, the result was no
116 "root=" specification being present. Under these circumstances
117 (refind_linux.conf absent, /etc/fstab present but lacking a "/" entry),
118 rEFInd now tries to identify a device to specify as "root=" via the
119 Discoverable Partitions Specification.
121 - Fixed bug that caused "Found match!" and a prompt to press a key to
122 continue to be printed if any partition used the Freedesktop.org
123 Discoverable Partitions Specification root-partition GUID. (This
124 was leftover debugging/testing code that I somehow missed deleting.)
126 - Added icon for Elementary OS.
128 - Added /etc/lsb-release to files scanned for clues about the Linux
129 distribution. This file differentiates Mint and Elementary OS from Ubuntu
130 better than does /etc/os-release, and may also help with other
131 closely-related distributions.
133 - Improvements to handling of case-insensitive string comparisons. These
134 are buggy on some EFIs, and such bugs affect things like dont_scan_*
135 blacklists, removal of rEFInd's own directory from scanning, matching of
136 keyword names in refind.conf, and even loading of icons. I've replaced
137 many calls to problematic functions with safer calls, which should help a
138 lot. There may still be problems on some systems with some computers,
139 though; as far as I can tell, the bugs are buried deep in some EFI
140 firmware, so I can only replace some of the most direct calls to
141 potentially buggy system calls.
146 - New icon for Kali Linux, submitted by Francesco D'Eugenio.
148 - Minor code changes to ensure that rEFInd compiles with GCC 5.1. (Tested
149 with GNU-EFI on a Fedora 22 system; not yet tested with the TianoCore
152 - Added new "fold_linux_kernels" token to refind.conf. This option, when
153 active (the default) "folds" all Linux kernels in a directory into a
154 single entry on the rEFInd menu. The kernel with the most recent time
155 stamp is launched by default. To launch another kernel, you must press F2
156 or Insert; additional kernels appear as options on the first kernel's
157 submenu. To see the pre-0.9.0 behavior, you must set "fold_linux_kernels
158 false" (or one of its synonyms, "off" or "0"). The point of this option
159 is to help de-clutter the rEFInd main menu.
161 - Added new Linux root (/) partition auto-discovery feature, based on
162 Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Spec (DPS)
163 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/DiscoverablePartitionsSpec/):
164 If no refind_linux.conf file or /etc/fstab file is found, and if a
165 partition with the correct DPS type code for the system architecture is
166 found, rEFInd adds "ro root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/{GUID}" to the kernel
167 options. This will not help on LVM setups, and will get it right for only
168 one installation on systems with multiple Linux installations, but it may
169 help some users, if/when the DPS type codes become more common.
171 - Fixed bug that caused a rEFInd crash if an empty refind_linux.conf
172 file was encountered.
174 - The mkrlconf.sh script now checks the OS on which it's running, which
175 should help avoid confusion or problems by users who mistakenly run it
178 - rEFInd now skips checking for various BIOS-mode boot sector signatures
179 when running on a UEFI-based PC; these checks are run only on Macs. This
180 may reduce startup time on systems with many partitions.
182 - Fixed Debian debinstall script to work correctly on IA32 systems. It had
183 a bug that caused filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be packaged for
186 - Modified Debian postinst file to call install.sh with --localkeys option
187 if sbsign and openssl are available, even when NOT in Secure Boot mode or
188 if shim is not detected. This helps with my Ubuntu PPA when using custom
189 Secure Boot keys, since the PPA is delivered unsigned. (Users will have
190 to have added their own local keys to their firmware's db.) For
191 consistency, I've made the same change to the RPM .spec file.
196 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused inappropriate installation under the
197 name bootx64.efi (or bootia32.efi) under Linux, with a failure to update
198 the boot entries in NVRAM, has been fixed.
200 - Added identification of XFS as filesystem type in volume descriptions.
202 - More fixes to filesystem type detection code. Previous version sometimes
203 identified FAT or NTFS (or anything with a boot loader) as a whole-disk
204 device rather than the correct filesystem type.
206 - Added protections to the code to reduce the risk of crashes that might
207 occur when dereferencing NULL pointers in various situations.
209 - I'm deprecating the use of filesystem numbers (as in "fs0:") because
210 they're unreliable -- filesystem numbers can change between boots and
211 might not be the same as those used in an EFI shell or other program.
212 Sooner or later I'll remove code supporting this feature. In the
213 meantime, if it doesn't work for you, please switch to using filesystem
214 labels, partition labels, or partition GUIDs.
216 - Added detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode GPT boot loader. Previously,
217 rEFInd could detect FreeBSD's BIOS-mode MBR boot loader, which gave
218 FreeBSD an appropriate icon on Macs; but the BIOS-mode GPT boot loader
219 code is different, so some recent FreeBSD installations showed up with
220 generic grey diamond icons. This change creates FreeBSD icons instead.
222 - Added "Secure Boot [active|inactive]" notice to "about" menu for x86
223 (32-bit) systems, since there are now a few 32-bit UEFI systems that
224 support Secure Boot. (AFAIK, these are mostly tablets and convertibles
225 such as the ASUS T100.)
227 - Added KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi to list of MOK managers. KeyTool
228 is the "super-deluxe" Secure Boot key and hash manager provided as part
229 of the efitools package.
231 - Fixed more instances of "invalid parameter" errors on some EFIs.
233 - Improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh.
235 - install.sh should no longer complain when copying Shim or MokManager over
241 - Removed special case of ignoring an HFS+ name of "HFS+ volume", since the
242 old rEFInd HFS+ driver that produced this name for all HFS+ volumes has
243 long since been updated to deliver a real name.
245 - Addition of new Windows 8 OS icon. On Macs and for BIOS/legacy boots, the
246 new icon is now used for Windows Vista, 7, and 8, while the old one is
247 used for earlier versions of Windows. For EFI-mode boots, the new icon is
250 - If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd now scans NTFS volumes on Macs for
251 the presence of Windows boot files, and removes any NTFS volume that
252 lacks such files from the BIOS/legacy boot list. This should help
253 unclutter the display on Macs that contain NTFS data partitions.
255 - Fixed bug that caused misidentification of both whole disks and NTFS
256 volumes as being FAT. (This bug affected the identification of devices
257 and locations in the rEFInd menu, not actual access to devices.)
259 - Code refactoring to clear out legacy-boot functions from the
260 ever-expanding refind/main.c file.
262 - Added new "badges" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf. This
263 option hides the device-type badges associated with the OS boot options.
265 - Reverted rEFIt commit r472, introduced in rEFInd 0.8.5 to support more
266 BMP images because I've received bug reports that it's causing existing
267 selection images to fail to load.
269 - Fixed install.sh bug that caused misidentification of installation
270 directory under OS X if an already-mounted ESP has spaces in its path.
272 - Fixed Mac-specific install.sh bug that could cause misidentification of
273 the ESP on disks with partition numbers of 10 or above.
279 - Added NTFS EFI filesystem driver.
281 - Minor improvements to filesystem driver framework code.
285 - Fixed bug in Btrfs driver's address reference.
287 - Improved install.sh to make it smarter about figuring out where to
288 install on Macs. Specifically, this version now upgrades existing
289 installations, if found (as it always has under Linux), rather than
290 blindly install to EFI/BOOT; it installs to EFI/refind if not existing
291 installation is found; it installs using the --shortform option to bless,
292 which seems to eliminate the 30-second delay problem; and it can handle
293 an HFS+ ESP, which it treats as a separate HFS+ volume (as if the user
294 had used --ownhfs). These changes do not affect behavior under Linux.
296 - Added missing check of architecture type for several tools.
298 - Applied rEFIt commit r472, which adds support for BMP images with negative
299 height fields, indicating that the image is NOT vertically flipped. This
300 commit and r467 were not incorporated in the original rEFInd because I
301 forked it from a Debian rEFIt package that had been patched to build
302 under GNU-EFI, and was apparently based on a slightly earlier version.
304 - Applied rEFIt commit r467, which improves Mac handling of legacy boots
305 from other than the first hard disk.
311 - Tweaked default for dont_scan_volumes: Removed "Recovery HD". This change
312 better suits the needs of OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") installations, but may
313 result in some stray Recovery HD entries on some Macs.
315 - Updated icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
317 - Added new configuration option, "enable_and_lock_vmx", which sets an
318 Intel CPU feature that's required for some types of virtualization to
319 work. Most EFIs enable setting this feature in their own setup utilities,
320 but some (such as most Macs) don't.
322 - If rEFInd can't locate an icons directory (either the default or one
323 specified by the icons_dir token), the program switches to text-only
326 - If a loader contains the string "grub" and no other clue to the loader's
327 OS association exists, search for os_grub.{png|icns} (which is not
328 provided with rEFInd) or os_linux.{png|icns}. (Previous versions provided
329 a generic loader icon for GRUB.)
331 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_files to not work with special-case
332 boot loaders (for OS X and Windows) when specifying the complete path to
333 the loader (e.g., EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi).
335 - Added support for the iPXE network boot tool (see BUILDING.txt for
336 building and basic use instructions).
341 - Added new feature: Setting "timeout = -1" in refind.conf causes rEFInd to
342 immediately boot the default option UNLESS a keypress is in the buffer
343 when rEFInd launches. In that case, if the keypress corresponds to a
344 shortcut key, the associated boot loader is launched; or if not, the menu
347 - Added new icons for Clover boot loader and for Mythbuntu Linux
350 - rEFInd now displays the partition's label, when one is available, when
351 offering a BIOS-mode boot option for a partition with no filesystem
352 driver. This works only on Macs doing BIOS-mode booting.
354 - Removed GPLv2 code from the FSW core files. This was done because the
355 Btrfs driver is derived from the GRUB Btrfs driver, which is licensed
356 under the GPLv3. Ironically, the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible
357 licenses, so ensuring that the Btrfs driver doesn't rely on GPLv2 code
358 was legally necessary. In most cases, I reverted to the original rEFIt
359 code, although I kept my own cache code; since I wrote it, I can
360 change its license to a BSD license.
362 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers immediately after loading
363 them. This didn't affect rEFInd's own drivers because they didn't include
364 the unload hooks, but it did affect some other drivers.
366 - Changed default scan_all_linux_kernels setting from "false" to "true",
367 and commented the option out in refind.conf-sample. This should not
368 affect most people, since refind.conf-sample had this option commented
369 out, and most rEFInd users either use it that way or don't have Linux
370 kernels installed at all. I've made this change because I want rEFInd to
371 "do the right thing" by default in as many cases as possible. For a while
372 now, rEFInd has been excluding non-bootable files from its menu, and most
373 kernels "in the wild" now include the EFI stub. Thus, enabling this
374 support by default seems worthwhile. If you prefer to not scan Linux
375 kernels by default, simply uncomment the "scan_all_linux_kernels" line
376 and ensure it's set to "false".
381 - Removed stray bit of debugging code that caused a prompt to press a
382 key to appear at rEFInd startup.
387 - Changed behavior when default_selection is not set: It now boots the
388 previously-booted loader, assuming it's still available; if not, rEFInd
389 boots the first loader (as it does now). Behavior is unchanged if
390 default_selection is set. Note that this behavior depends on the ability
391 of rEFInd to store an EFI variable in NVRAM. It therefore fails on
392 systems with flaky NVRAM storage. You can view the previously-booted
394 /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/PreviousBoot-36d08fa7-cf0b-42f5-8f14-68df73ed3740
395 variable under Linux.
397 - Added icon for Mageia Linux (os_mageia.png).
399 - Fixed bug that could misidentify a not-quite-GUID as a GUID in a
400 manual boot stanza's "volume" line.
402 - I've updated my personal build system, and therefore the rEFInd Makefiles
403 and related files, to use TianoCore UDK2014 rather than UDK2010.
405 - Added "deep_uefi_legacy_scan" token. When not set (the default), rEFInd
406 does not modify EFI NVRAM settings when scanning for BIOS-mode boot
407 loaders on UEFI-based (non-Mac) computers. Some computers require
408 uncommenting this setting for rEFInd to reliably detect some BIOS-mode
409 boot devices. Passing "0", "off", or "false" as an option resets it to
410 the default value (useful in a loaded secondary configuration file to
411 override a setting in the main file).
416 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders stored
417 on the root directory of a partition.
419 - Added two new bitmap fonts to those distributed with rEFInd: Ubuntu Mono
420 and Nimbus Mono. Both come in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 24-point sizes.
422 - Messages about pauses for scanning and re-scanning of boot loaders are
423 now suppressed when doing an initial delayed scan when scan_delay is 1
426 - Improved centering of legacy boot option descriptions on some systems'
429 - Fixed bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot to boot from an inappropriate
430 device if that device had an innately high boot priority (as set by the
433 - Changed icons from ICNS to PNG form. There are several reasons to do
434 this, all of them minor; but together they're enough to warrant a change.
435 PNG is more common, and therefore more accessible to most users --
436 particularly those who don't use OS X. The PNG files are smaller than
437 their ICNS equivalents. PNG supports a wider range of sizes (although I'm
438 not now using anything that ICNS doesn't support, I might in the future).
439 The icon-scaling support added a few versions ago makes ICNS's support
440 for multiple icon sizes relatively unimportant.
442 - Reversed order of search for icons by extension: rEFInd now searches
443 for PNG files before ICNS files, rather than the other way around. This
444 makes it possible to override a volume icon for rEFInd by giving it the
445 name .VolumeIcon.png, even when a .VolumeIcon.icns file exists on the
446 volume and is used by OS X.
448 - Fixed bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take higher-than-intended
449 precedence in icon setting for OS X.
451 - Chainloading to BIOS-mode boot loaders now works on UEFI-based PCs when
452 rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI, not just when built with Tianocore.
457 - The "dont_scan_volumes" parameter now also works with legacy-boot
458 volumes. Unlike with EFI volumes, where the option you pass must exactly
459 match an entire volume name, when applied to legacy-boot volumes, it
460 matches any part of the description that appears beneath the item when
461 you select it in the rEFInd main menu.
463 - Can now boot in legacy mode from second (and probably later) hard disks!
465 - rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware name string shown in the
466 system information screen to 65 characters. This is done because at least
467 one EFI presents a longer string by default, and this causes the entire
468 information display to come up empty on 800x600 displays.
470 - rEFInd now uses the partition's name (as stored in the GPT data
471 structures) as a fallback for the filesystem's name if the latter can't
472 be found. Exceptions are if the partition name is one of three generic
473 names used by GPT fdisk: "Microsoft basic data", "Linux filesystem", or
474 "Apple HFS/HFS+". These are ignored in favor of the descriptive fallback
475 (e.g., "20 GiB Btrfs volume")
477 - It's now possible to specify a volume by partition GUID number in a
478 manual boot stanza. This should be more reliable (albeit also more
479 awkward) than using a filesystem number (such as fs0: or fs1:).
481 - Fixed memory-allocation bug that could cause error message displays,
482 and possibly hangs, when re-scanning boot loaders.
487 - Attempt to fix rEFInd perpetually re-scanning after ejecting a disc on
490 - Added check to remove redundant (or non-functional if Secure Boot is
491 active) kernel entries for Ubuntu, which is now including two versions of
492 kernels, one signed and the other unsigned.
494 - Fixed bug in install.sh that could cause it to display error messages
495 if the dmraid utility was not installed.
497 - The HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name.
499 - Fixed some EFI filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups under
500 some circumstances. These bugs could affect any of the filesystem
503 - Added "gdisk" option to the "showtools" configuration file token. When
504 active, this adds gdisk.efi or gdisk_{arch}.efi, if present in the
505 EFI\tools directory, to the tools row.
507 - Fixed mistaken identification of the MOK utility as the "MOK utility
514 - Added "debian" directory to source, which facilitates creation of Debian
515 packages. Packages built in this way are built with GNU-EFI and don't run
516 any post-installation script, so although the rEFInd binaries are on the
517 hard disk, they aren't installed to be bootable; you must manually run
518 install.sh. Also, at least on Ubuntu, the Make.common file's /usr/lib64
519 references must be changed to /usr/lib. This is more of a proof of
520 concept and a "leg up" for distribution maintainers than anything else.
522 - Two new options, big_icon_size and small_icon_size, set the size of
523 the first-row OS icons and of the second-row tool icons, respectively.
524 The big_icon_size option also indirectly sets the size of disk-type
525 badges; they're 1/4 the size of the big icons. Default values are 128 and
526 48, respectively, to match the actual icon files provided with rEFInd. If
527 the icon you're using is of a different size than you've specified,
528 rEFInd scales it. For best quality, you should both provide icons drawn
529 to the right size and set the icon sizes in refind.conf.
531 - rEFInd now automatically scales icons to fit the standard icon sizes.
532 This won't have any effect with the icons that come with rEFInd, but it
533 can help if you want to use another icon, since you needn't scale it in a
534 graphics program before using it. Note that rEFInd uses bitmap icons, so
535 scaling by a huge amount (say, a 16x16 icon to fit the standard 128x128
536 OS icon) is not likely to look good.
538 - Added new option, banner_scale, that tells rEFInd how to handle banners:
539 Set to "noscale" (the default), banners are not scaled, although they'll
540 be cropped if they're too big for the display. This is the same as the
541 behavior in previous versions. Set to "fillscreen", rEFInd now scales the
542 banner image (larger or smaller) to fill the display.
544 - Adjusted the post-installation script in refind.spec (used to generate
545 RPMs, and therefore also indirectly Debian packages) to search for
546 existing shim program files under the filesnames shim.efi and shimx64.efi
547 rather than just shim.efi. Ubuntu uses shimx64.efi, so Debian packages
548 were failing to detect Ubuntu's shim in previous versions. (Note,
549 however, that Ubuntu's early shim 0.1 is unsuitable for use with rEFInd
550 The newer 0.4 version that's in the repositories now should work fine;
551 it's only when installing on an older system that's NOT been updated that
552 problems might arise.
557 - Can now specify complete paths, optionally including volumes, in
560 - Added shimx64.efi to the default dont_scan_files list.
562 - Added windows_recovery_files token, to specify what program(s) launch a
563 Windows recovery utility; and the "windows_recovery" option to
564 "showtools," to control whether or not to display the Windows recovery
565 utility on the second row of icons.
567 - The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files,
568 and scan_driver_dirs tokens in refind.conf now support "+" as the first
569 option, which causes the remaining options to be added to the default
570 value rather than replacing that value. (This has no practical effect for
571 scan_driver_dirs, though, since it has a null default value.)
573 - Added support for specifying the configuration file at program launch,
574 via the "-c" parameter, as in "refind_x64.efi -c foo.conf" to use the
575 foo.conf file as the main configuration file.
577 - Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with
578 duplicate filesystem UUIDs. These are likely parts of RAID arrays and so
579 would have the same boot loaders or kernels as the first one with a given
582 - Added feature in install.sh: Script now tries to locate and mount an ESP
583 in Linux, if it's currently unmounted.
585 - Fixed bug in mkrlconf.sh and install.sh that caused a stray line break
586 and PARTUUID= specification to appear in generated refind_linux.conf file
587 under some circumstances.
592 - Added support for multiple "default_selection" targets. These MUST be
593 comma-separated AND enclosed in quotes, as in:
594 default_selection "fred,ginger"
595 This example will launch "fred" by default if it's available; and if
596 it's not, rEFInd will attempt to launch "ginger" as the default.
598 - Added support for time-sensitive "default_selection" setting. This token
599 may now have either one or three options. If one, it's interpreted as it
600 has been in the past, as setting a default that's independent of times.
601 If you follow this default by two times, however, those are interpreted
602 as the start and end times (in 24-hour format) for a default setting. For
603 instance, "default_selection foo 8:00 17:00" causes foo to be the default
604 from 8:00 (AM) to 17:00 (aka 5:00 PM). You can include multiple
605 "default_selection" lines to set different defaults for a variety of
606 times. If they're in conflict, the last one takes precedence. Note that
607 times are hardware clock's native value, which may be local time or UTC,
608 depending on your computer.
610 - Added support for a blank-screen startup: Set "screensaver -1" and the
611 screen saver will be initialized when rEFInd starts. If you set a low
612 "timeout" value, the result will be a boot straight to the default OS
613 unless you hit a key soon after rEFInd starts. Once you hit a key, the
614 screensaver will be disabled.
616 - Added --ownhfs {target} option to install.sh. This option causes rEFInd
617 to install to an HFS+ partition in a way that's more consistent with the
618 way the Mac's native boot loader is installed. Note that you should NOT
619 install to an already-bootable partition with this option, since it will
620 overwrite the existing boot loader, which would render OS X unbootable.
625 - Fixed bug that caused unbootable exFAT partitions to show up as
626 bootable on Macs with BIOS/CSM/legacy boot options enabled.
628 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused installs to the ESP on recent
629 versions of OS X to fail.
631 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to hang on some Macs when multiple EFI
632 drivers were present.
634 - Fixed bug that caused clear to default gray screen when launching OSes
635 with 'use_graphics_for' enabled, even when the rEFInd background is not
636 gray. Now rEFInd clears to the same background color used in its menu.
637 When launching OS X, though, the OS X boot loader will itself clear to
638 gray a second or so later; and when launching Linux, it will clear to
639 black a second or so later.
644 - My initial 0.7.4 release broke legacy-boot ability on Macs, so I quickly
645 released this version using the original 0.7.4 filenames to fix the
651 - Fixed options passing to loader to include loader's filename as the first
652 option. This omission had no effect on most boot loaders, but caused
653 VMware's mboot64.efi to fail.
655 - Added support for memtest86 as second-row option. Program must be
656 stored in EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/memtest,
657 or EFI/memtest86; and must use the name memtest86.efi, memtest86_x64.efi,
658 memtest86x64.efi, or bootx64.efi (changing "x64" to "ia32" on IA-32
659 systems). The memtest86 program is scanned for when the "showtools"
660 option includes the "memtest" or "memtest86" token, which it does by
663 - Added space to end of "Boot %s from %s" string; enables adding a space
664 to the end of the "default_selection" item (in quotes) to set a default
665 that matches a volume name that's identical to another one except for
666 extra characters at the end of the non-wanted volume's name.
668 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to hang when launching boot loaders
669 under some conditions. (Launching from Firewire drives on Macs is the
670 known case, but there may be others.)
675 - Fixed bug that caused missing media-type badges on BIOS-mode boot
678 - Fixed bug that caused failure when launching BIOS-mode OSes on Macs.
683 - Fixed bug that caused display glitches in the final entry on the first
684 row of icons if the second row of icons was empty.
686 - Fixed bug that could cause incorrect scanning or even a rEFInd crash when
687 using volume specification in also_scan_dirs token.
689 - Added protection against loading invalid drivers and other EFI programs.
690 (Some EFIs crash when attempting to load such drivers and programs.)
692 - Added PreLoader.efi and shim-fedora.efi to default dont_scan_files list;
693 it's now "shim.efi, shim-fedora.efi, PreLoader.efi, TextMode.efi,
694 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, MokManager.efi, HashTool.efi,
695 HashTool-signed.efi".
697 - Added icon for Funtoo Linux.
699 - Fixed reading of volume badges from user-specified icons directory, which
702 - Fixed handling of /.VolumeBadge.icns (or /.VolumeBadge.png) files, which
708 - Fixed build problem with recent development versions of EDK2.
710 - Added scan for Boot Repair's backup of the Windows boot loader
711 (bkpbootmgfw.efi). If found, give separate entries for it and for
712 bootmgfw.efi, each with its own descriptive text label.
714 - Fixed also_scan_dirs; used to have bug that caused it to ignore
715 volume specification, if present.
717 - Fixed bug in driver cache that caused Btrfs driver to hang sometimes.
722 - Added Btrfs signature to rEFInd, so that it can identify the filesystem
723 type for volumes that lack labels.
725 - Changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit.
726 This *SHOULD* enable use of over-2TiB filesystems (for those filesystems
727 that support such large volumes). This capability is largely untested,
730 - Added a cache to the filesystem driver core, and therefore to all the
731 filesystem drivers. This cache greatly improves performance in
732 VirtualBox, and offers modest performance improvements on a few "real"
733 computers. The most dramatic improvement is on ext2/3fs under VirtualBox:
734 Loading a kernel and initrd used to take ~200 seconds on my system, but
735 now takes ~3 seconds! On most "real" hardware, the improvement is much
736 less dramatic -- an improvement of a second or less, presumably because
737 of cacheing within the EFI or on the hard disk itself.
739 - Filter boot loaders based on a test of their validity; keeps out Linux
740 kernels without EFI stub loader code, loaders for the wrong architecture,
741 non-EFI loaders, etc.
743 - New Btrfs driver, contributed by Samuel Liao based on GRUB 2.00 Btrfs
749 - Changed the 64-bit EFI shell included in the CD-R and USB flash drive
750 images to a version 2 shell that should support the "bcfg" command.
752 - Added support for PreBootloader to refind.spec's built-in installation
755 - Added support for the Linux Foundation's PreLoader to install.sh. It's
756 treated just like shim, including using the --shim option (or, now,
757 --preloader); but it searches for and copies HashTool.efi rather than
758 MokManager.efi, and filenames are adjusted appropriately.
760 - Added code to determine Linux root filesystem from /etc/fstab file, if
761 it's on the same partition as the kernel and if the refind_linux.conf
762 file is not available. This enables rEFInd to boot Linux without any
763 rEFInd-specific configuration files on some (but not all) systems.
768 - New feature: rEFInd now ignores symbolic links to files on filesystems
769 that support them. This prevents the "vmlinuz" symbolic link that some
770 distributions create in the root directory from appearing in the loader
771 list. Note that this does NOT affect symbolic links to directories.
773 - Added icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu.
775 - Improved the install.sh script so that it does a better job dealing with
776 directory names that contain spaces.
778 - rEFInd now tries to guess the Linux distribution type based on the kernel
779 filename (Fedora and RHEL only) or the "ID" or "NAME" variables in
780 /etc/os-release on the kernel's partition. None of these is guaranteed to
781 work. A fallback of the Tux penguin icon remains in place in case rEFInd
782 can't find anything substantive enough for a guess.
784 - Added "EFI\opensuse" to the locations searched for MOK utilities, since
785 OpenSUSE now uses that name.
787 - Renamed "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" to "Reboot to Computer Setup
790 - Fixed bug in gptsync that caused it to hang if the disk had too few GPT
791 partitions to fill the MBR.
796 - Added support for "screensaver" token. If set to a positive integer, this
797 causes the screen to blank after the specified number of seconds of
798 inactivity. Pressing most keys (unfortunately NOT including Shift, Alt,
799 or Ctrl) will restore the display and restart the screen saver timeout.
801 - Added icon for ChromeOS (os_chrome.icns in the icons subdirectory).
802 ChromeBooks reportedly boots using the fallback filename, but if a user
803 wants to install rEFInd on a ChromeBook, renaming the original EFI/BOOT
804 directory to EFI/chrome and then installing rEFInd in the fallback
805 filename will bring up this new icon for ChromeOS.
807 - Added new option to reboot the computer into the firmware's user
808 interface. This option is active by default, or can be set via the
809 "firmware" option to the "showtools" token in refind.conf. It works
810 on only some computers, though; older computers lack this feature, and
811 when rEFInd is told to use this feature on such computers, the directive
814 - Upgraded LodePNG library from version 20121216 to 20130415 and
815 restructured rEFInd-specific modifications to simplify future upgrades.
817 - Replaced hexadecimal error code with description if an error is
818 encountered when saving a screen shot.
820 - Enable multiple screen shots: Rather than naming all screen shots
821 "screenshot.bmp", the name is now "screenshot_###.bmp", where "###" is a
822 sequence number, starting with "001".
827 - Modified default banner to include the new rEFInd icon, provided by Erik
830 - Worked around a suspected firmware bug that caused rEFInd 0.6.6 to 0.6.8
831 to hang at startup on some systems (DUET and some Macs).
833 - Modified rEFInd to search for gptsync under the names gptsync.efi and
834 gptsync_{arch}.efi, where {arch} is ia32 or x64. (Previous versions
835 searched only for gptsync.efi.)
837 - Added gptsync program from rEFIt project, but with some changes to
838 improve flexibility and make it less likely that UEFI users will
839 accidentally trash their systems.
841 - Changed timeout code so that the timeout continues if the keyboard is
842 disconnected. This can help in booting a headless server or a system with
843 a bluetooth or other keyboard that's not recognized by the EFI.
848 - Added workaround for presumed EFI bug that was causing "Invalid
849 Parameter" errors when scanning for boot loaders on some computers.
851 - Added search for an EFI shell called shell.efi in the root directory
852 (previously this name was only accepted in EFI\tools).
854 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail on some systems (Fedora
855 18, for instance) because of a problem identifying the ESP.
857 - Fixed bug that caused icons named after boot loaders to not be used.
862 - Added a more explicit error message summarizing options when a launch of
863 a program results in a Secure Boot failure.
865 - Changed MOK tool detection to scan all volumes, not just the rEFInd
866 home volume. This is desirable because the Linux Foundation's HashTool
867 can only scan its own volume, making it desirable to place copies of this
868 program on every volume that holds EFI boot loader binaries.
870 - Added support for launching the Linux Foundation HashTool as a means of
871 managing MOKs (or MOK hashes, at any rate).
873 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to present an entry for itself as a
874 Microsoft OS if it was launched as EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.
876 - Fixed bug that caused dont_scan_volumes option to be added to
879 - Fixed dont_scan_volumes so that it works with OS X boot loaders.
881 - Fixed broken mixing of PNG and ICNS icons when using a user-specified
882 icons directory -- previously, an ICNS file in the default directory
883 would override a PNG file in the user-specified directory.
888 - rEFInd now ignores the fallback boot loader (EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
889 EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi) if it's identical to another boot loader on
890 the same volume. This is intended to help unclutter the display on
891 systems that run Windows, since Windows tends to duplicate its own boot
892 loader under the fallback name.
894 - Added new "font" token to refind.conf, which enables specifying a font in
895 the form of a PNG file. This file must contain monospace glyphs for the
896 95 characters from ASCII 32 to 126 (space through tilde), inclusive, plus
897 a glyph to be displayed for characters outside of this range, for a total
900 - Replaced the old font (inherited from rEFInd) with an anti-aliased
901 version of Luxi Mono Regular 14 point.
903 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore manual boot stanzas in files
904 included via the "include" token in refind.conf.
906 - Fixed bug that caused ASSERT error on some systems (and conceivably a
907 crash on startup on some) when default_selection line in refind.conf was
908 commented out or empty.
910 - Fixed bug that caused "Binary is whitelisted" message to persist on
911 screen after loading MOK-signed drivers in Secure Boot mode.
913 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to ignore the "icon" token in refind.conf
916 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused the script to fail to update
917 drivers when rEFInd was installed in EFI/BOOT/.
922 - Improved text color support: rEFInd now uses black text against light
923 backgrounds and white text against dark backgrounds.
925 - Added support for PNGs as banners, icons, and selectors.
927 - Added icon for ALT Linux.
929 - Added "safemode" option to "hideui" token, to hide option to boot into
930 safe mode for OS X ("-v -x" option to boot.efi).
932 - Added icon for Haiku (os_haiku.icns).
934 - Enable transparency of icons & main-menu text when the banner icon is
935 sized to cover these areas.
937 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to crash if fed a banner image that's
938 too big. Note that "too big" can be substantially smaller than the screen
944 - Revised install.sh to copy ext2fs driver, rather than ext4fs driver, for
945 ext2/3 filesystems. This can help keep non-functional entries from links
946 from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz out of the menu if the system uses ext4fs
947 on root and ext2fs or ext3fs on /boot.
949 - Fixed a couple of memory management bugs that cause rEFInd to hang at
950 startup on some systems.
955 - Added the ability to specify a volume name or number in the
956 "dont_scan_dirs" and "also_scan_dirs" tokens.
958 - Fixed a bug that caused removable EFI media to not appear in scan lists
959 if rEFInd was installed as EFI/BOOT/boot{arch}.efi on a hard disk.
961 - Modified ISO-9660 driver so that it can handle discs with other than
962 2048-byte sectors. This makes it useful for reading "hybrid ISO" images
963 burned to USB flash disks.
965 - New mvrefind.sh script to move a rEFInd installation between a standard
966 location (typically EFI/refind) and one of the fallback locations
967 (EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot). It can also do more exotic locations.
969 - The install.sh script now installs to EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi or
970 EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi if it's run in BIOS mode. This is
971 intended to give some chance of producing a bootable installation should
972 a user accidentally install Linux in EFI mode and then install rEFInd
973 from that installation.
975 - The install.sh script now tries to find an existing rEFInd installation
976 and upgrade it, even if it's in EFI/BOOT or EFI/Microsoft/Boot rather
979 - New "--yes" option to install.sh to help with unattended or automated
980 installations (as from an RPM or Debian package).
985 - Inclusion of a sample refind.spec file for the benefit of RPM
986 distribution maintainers who might want to include rEFInd. It's a bit
987 rough, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there....
989 - The EFI filesystem drivers can now be built with the GNU-EFI toolkit as
990 well as with the TianoCore EDK2. See the BUILDING.txt file for details on
991 how to build them with either toolkit. This improvement doesn't affect
992 users of my binary packages, but it should make it easier for Linux
993 distributions to adopt rEFInd into their package systems.
995 - Tweaked refind.inf file for better build results using "native" TianoCore
996 EDK2 build process (vs. the Makefile-based build process that I use under
997 Linux). This won't affect those who use my binary builds or build under
998 Linux with the "make" command.
1000 - Fixed bug that prevented Secure Boot launches from working when rEFInd
1001 was built with GNU-EFI rather than the TianoCore EDK2.
1003 - Substantial reworking of Secure Boot code, based on James Bottomley's
1004 PreLoader program. This new code eliminates the limitation of launching
1005 just one driver in Secure Boot mode and is likely to be more reliable
1006 with future or obscure boot loaders. It should also work with non-x86-64
1007 systems, although this relies on a platform-specific shim program, which
1008 to date exists only for x86-64. The basic features are the same as before
1009 -- rEFInd relies on shim for authentication functions and will launch
1010 programs that are signed by Secure Boot keys, shim keys, or MOKs.
1012 - Altered default for "textmode" option (when it's commented out) to not
1013 adjust the text mode at all. (Prior versions set it to mode 0 by
1019 - Added "--root" option to install.sh, to enable installation of rEFInd
1020 to something other than the currently-running OS. This is intended for
1021 use on emergency discs.
1023 - Thanks to Stefan Agner, the ext4fs driver now supports the "meta_bg"
1024 filesystem feature, which distributes metadata throughout the disk. This
1025 feature isn't used by default, but can be set at filesystem creation time
1026 by passing the "-O meta_bg,^resize_inode" option to mke2fs. (Using
1027 "^resize_inode" is necessary because meta_bg is incompatible with
1028 resize_inode, which IS used by default.) This feature can be used on
1029 ext3fs and ext2fs as well as on ext4fs, so the ext4fs driver can now
1030 handle some ext3fs and ext2fs partitions that the ext2fs driver can't
1033 - Fixed some screen resolution-setting bugs.
1035 - Added the "words" that make up a filesystem's label (delimited by spaces,
1036 dashes, or underscores) to the list of bases used to search for OS icons.
1037 For instance, if the filesystem's label is "Arch", rEFInd searches for
1038 os_Arch.icns; if it's "Fedora 17", it searches for os_Fedora.icns and
1039 os_17.icns; and if it's "NEW_GENTOO", it searches for os_NEW.icns and
1042 - Refined hints displays to be more context-sensitive, particularly in text
1045 - Instead of displaying a blank filesystem label when a filesystem has
1046 none, rEFInd now displays the size and/or type of the filesystem, as in
1047 "boot EFI\foo\bar.efi from 200 MiB ext3 volume" rather than "boot
1048 EFI\foo\bar.efi from".
1050 - Fixed a bug that caused the screen to clear after displaying an error
1051 message but before displaying the "Hit any key to continue" message when
1052 a boot loader launch failed.
1057 - Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause a program crash when
1058 specifying certain values with the "also_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_volumes",
1059 "dont_scan_dirs", "dont_scan_files", and "scan_driver_dirs" refind.conf
1062 - Modified Linux kernel initrd-finding code so that if an initrd is
1063 specified in refind_linux.conf, rEFInd will not add any initrd it finds.
1064 This enables an override of the default initrd, and is likely to be
1065 particularly helpful to Arch Linux users.
1067 - Added ext4fs driver!
1069 - Made "boot" the default value for "also_scan_dirs".
1071 - Added identifying screen header to line editor.
1073 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd's display to be mis-sized upon return
1074 from a program that set the resolution itself.
1076 - Adjusted "resolution" refind.conf parameter so that it can accept EITHER
1077 a resolution as width and height OR a single digit as a UEFI mode number
1078 (which is system-specific). This is done because some systems present the
1079 same mode twice in their mode lists, perhaps varying in refresh rate,
1080 monitor output, or some other salient characteristics; specifying the
1081 mode number enables selecting the higher-numbered mode, whereas using
1082 horizontal and vertical resolution values selects the lowest-numbered
1085 - Added "textmode" refind.conf parameter to set the text mode used in
1086 text-only displays, and for the line editor and boot-time handoff
1087 display even in graphics mode.
1089 - Fixed bug that caused tools (shell, etc.) to launch when they were
1090 highlighted and F2 or Insert was pressed.
1092 - Added "editor" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf, which
1093 disables the boot options editor.
1095 - Added hints text to rEFInd main menu and sub-menus. This can be disabled
1096 by setting the new "hints" option to the "hideui" token in refind.conf.
1098 - Added "boot with minimal options" entry to refind_linux.conf file
1099 generated by install.sh. This entry boots without the options extracted
1100 from the /etc/default/grub file.
1102 - Added keys subdirectory to main distribution, to hold public Secure
1103 Boot/shim keys from known sources.
1105 - Changed install.sh --drivers option to --alldrivers, added new
1106 --nodrivers option, and made the default on Linux to install the one
1107 driver that's used on /boot (or the root filesystem if /boot isn't a
1108 separate partition). Of course, this won't install a non-existent driver,
1109 and it also won't work properly if run from an emergency disk unless you
1110 mount a separate /boot partition at that location.
1112 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented creation of refind_linux.conf file
1115 0.5.1.1 (12/12/2012):
1116 ---------------------
1118 - Fixed bug in install.sh that prevented it from working on OS X.
1123 - Added support for "0" options to "textonly" and "scan_all_linux_kernels"
1124 to reverse the usual meaning of these tokens. This is useful for
1125 including these options in a secondary configuration file called with the
1126 new "include" token to override a setting set in the main file.
1128 - Added "include" token for refind.conf, to enable including a secondary
1129 configuration file from a primary one.
1131 - Modified install.sh so that it creates a simple refind_linux.conf file in
1132 /boot, if that file doesn't already exist and if install.sh is run from
1133 Linux. If that directory happens to be on a FAT, HFS+, ext2fs, ext3fs, or
1134 ReiserFS volume, and if the necessary drivers are installed, the result
1135 is that rEFInd will detect the Linux installation with no further
1136 configuration on many systems. (Some may still require tweaking of kernel
1137 options, though; for instance, adding "dolvm" on Gentoo systems that use
1140 - Added --shim and --localkeys options to install.sh to help simplify setup
1141 on systems with Secure Boot active.
1143 - Fixed (maybe) bug that caused resolution options to not be displayed on
1144 recent Macs with GOP graphics when specifying an invalid resolution in
1147 - Fixed bug that caused some programs (EFI shells, in particular) to hang
1148 when launching on some systems (DUET, in particular).
1150 - Implemented a fix to enable ELILO to launch with Secure Boot active.
1151 This fix might help with some other boot loaders in Secure Boot mode,
1152 too, but I don't know of any specifics.
1157 - Added the ability to include quote marks ('"') in refind.conf and
1158 refind_linux.conf tokens by doubling them up, as in:
1159 "ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value=""this is it"""
1160 This example results in the following string being passed as an
1162 ro root=/dev/sda4 some_value="this is it"
1164 - Changed refind.conf-sample to uncomment the scan_all_linux_kernels
1165 option by default. If this option is deleted or commented out, the
1166 program default remains to not scan all Linux kernels; but with
1167 increasing numbers of distributions shipping with kernels that include
1168 EFI stub loader support, setting the configuration file default to scan
1169 for them makes sense.
1171 - Modified the "resolution" token so that it affects text mode as well
1172 as graphics mode. On my systems, though, the actual text area is still
1173 restricted to an 80x25 area. (This seems to be a firmware limitation; my
1174 EFI shells are also so limited.)
1176 - Fixed a bug that caused the options line editor to blank out lines that
1177 were not actually edited.
1179 - Added support for using Matthew Garrett's Shim program and its Machine
1180 Owner Keys (MOKs) to extend Secure Boot capabilities. If rEFInd is
1181 launched from Shim on a computer with Secure Boot active, rEFInd will
1182 launch programs signed with either a standard UEFI Secure Boot key or a
1183 MOK. For the moment, this feature works only on x86-64 systems.
1185 - Added new "dont_scan_files" (aka "don't_scan_files") token for
1186 refind.conf. The effect is similar to dont_scan_dirs, but it creates a
1187 blacklist of filenames within directories rather than directory names.
1188 I'm initially using it to place shim.efi and MokManager.efi in the
1189 blacklist to keep these programs out of the OS list. (MokManager.efi is
1190 scanned separately as a tool; see below.) I've moved checks for
1191 ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi, and TextMode.efi to this list. (These
1192 three had previously been blacklisted by hard-coding in ScanLoaderDir().)
1194 - Added the directory from which rEFInd launched to dont_scan_dirs. This
1195 works around a bug in which rEFInd would show itself as a bogus Windows
1196 entry if it's installed as EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi.
1198 - Added support for launching MokManager.efi for managing the Machine Owner
1199 Keys (MOKs) maintained by the shim boot loader developed by Fedora and
1200 SUSE. This program is scanned and presented as a second-row tool.
1202 - Added support for Apple's Recovery HD partition: If it's detected, a new
1203 icon appears on the second row. This icon can be removed by explicitly
1204 setting the "showtools" option in refind.conf and excluding the
1205 "apple_recovery" option from that line.
1207 - Fixed bug that caused text-mode ("textonly" refind.conf option enabled)
1208 menu entries to be right-aligned rather than left-aligned when rEFInd was
1209 compiled with the TianoCore EDK2.
1211 - Added "--usedefault {devicename}" and "--drivers" options to the
1212 install.sh script and changed the "esp" option to "--esp".
1217 - Added an icon for gummiboot.
1219 - Added a boot option editor: Pressing the Insert or F2 key from a boot
1220 tag's options menu opens a simple text-mode line editor on which the boot
1221 options may be edited for a one-time boot with altered options.
1223 - Modified the "scan_delay" feature to delay and then perform a re-scan,
1224 which may work better than the first attempt at this feature (which I'm
1225 told isn't working as planned).
1227 - Modified rEFInd to add a space after the command-line options only when
1228 launching Mac OS X. On some early Macs, the extra space (which had been
1229 present by default, as a carryover from rEFIt) causes problems when
1230 booting Linux kernels from FAT partitions.
1235 - Fixed some minor memory management issues.
1237 - Added new "scan_delay" feature to impose a delay before scanning
1240 - Changed default "scanfor" option from internal-external-optical to either
1241 internal-external-optical-manual (for non-Macs) or
1242 internal-hdbios-external-biosexternal-optical-cd-manual (for Macs). I've
1243 done this for two reasons:
1244 - Many Mac users have been confused by the fact that rEFInd needs
1245 reconfiguration to detect Windows (or Linux installed in BIOS mode),
1246 since rEFIt scans BIOS devices by default. Adding the BIOS options as
1247 default for them should help them.
1248 - Adding the "manual" option enables users to simply add manual boot
1249 stanzas and have them work, which is more intuitive. Adding the
1250 "manual" option will have no effect unless manual stanzas are created
1251 or uncommented, so this part of the change won't affect users' working
1252 default configurations.
1254 - Added new legacy (BIOS) boot support for UEFI-based PCs.
1259 - Fixed bug that caused a failure to boot BIOS-based OSes on Macs.
1261 - Fixed bug in install.sh that caused it to fail to detect rEFItBlesser.
1266 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be corrupted by rEFInd on
1269 - Fixed bug that caused filesystem labels to be truncated in the drivers
1272 - Fixed bug in use_graphics_for option parsing that caused most options
1273 to set graphics mode for OS X and/or Linux but not other boot
1276 - Tweaked install script to better isolate the ESP under OS X.
1281 - rEFInd now supports compilation using the TianoCore UDK2010/EDK2
1282 development kit in addition to GNU-EFI.
1284 - Added new "use_graphics_for" option to control which OSes to boot in
1285 graphics mode. (This effect lasts for a fraction of a second on most
1286 systems, since the boot loader that rEFInd launches is likely to set
1287 graphics or text mode itself.)
1289 - Graphics-mode booting now clears the screen to the current rEFInd
1290 background color (rather than black) and does NOT display boot messages.
1291 The intent is for a smoother transition when booting OS X, or perhaps
1292 other OSes that don't display boot loader messages. In practice, this
1293 effect will be tiny for many OSes, since the boot loader generally clears
1294 the screen within a fraction of a second of being launched; but the
1295 "flicker" of a rEFInd message in that time can sometimes be distracting.
1297 - Filesystem drivers now work on EFI 1.x systems, such as Macs.
1299 - Removed "linux.conf" as a valid alternative name for "refind_linux.conf"
1300 for holding Linux kernel options. The kernel developers plan to use
1301 "linux.conf" themselves.
1306 - Added a message to install.sh when run on Macs to remind users to update
1307 the "scanfor" line in refind.conf if they need to boot BIOS-based OSes
1310 - Modified install.sh script to be smarter about running efibootmgr on
1311 Linux. It now uses the whole path to the rEFInd binary as a key to
1312 determine whether an existing entry exists, rather than just the filename
1313 portion. If an entry exists and is the first entry in the boot order, the
1314 script does nothing to the NVRAM entries. If such an entry exists but is
1315 not the default, the script deletes that entry and creates a new one
1316 (implicitly making it the first in the boot order). If such an entry does
1317 not exist, the script creates a new one (again, making it the first in
1320 - Added "dont_scan_dirs" configuration file option, which adds directories
1321 to a "blacklist" of directories that are NOT scanned for boot loaders.
1326 - Added "scanning for new boot loaders" message to the re-scan function
1327 (hitting Esc at the main menu). It usually flashes up too quickly to
1328 be of importance, but if the scan function takes a while because of
1329 access to a CD that must be spun up, it should make it clear that the
1332 - Modified install.sh script to detect rEFItBlesser on Macs, and if
1333 present, to ask the user if it should be removed.
1335 - Cleaned up the Make.common file for the filesystem drivers.
1337 - Changed HFS+ driver to return volume label of "HFS+ volume" rather than
1338 an empty label. (The driver doesn't currently read the real volume
1341 - Fixed bug that could cause rEFInd to appear in its own menu after
1342 running a shell and then re-scanning for boot loaders.
1347 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
1348 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
1349 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
1350 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
1351 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
1352 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
1353 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
1355 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
1356 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
1357 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
1359 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
1360 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
1361 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
1362 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
1364 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
1365 file when launched from rEFInd.
1370 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
1371 received reports that it's not working as intended.
1373 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
1374 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
1375 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
1376 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
1377 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
1378 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
1380 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
1381 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
1386 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
1387 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
1388 sample configuration file for a full description.
1390 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
1391 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
1392 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
1393 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
1394 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
1396 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
1397 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
1400 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
1401 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
1406 - Improved menu navigation:
1407 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
1408 down arrows move between rows.
1409 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
1410 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
1411 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
1412 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
1414 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
1415 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
1416 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
1421 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
1422 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
1423 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
1424 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
1425 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
1426 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
1429 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
1432 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
1434 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
1435 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
1442 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
1443 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
1445 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
1446 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
1447 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
1448 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
1449 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
1450 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
1451 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
1452 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
1453 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
1454 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
1455 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
1457 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
1458 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
1459 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
1460 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
1461 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
1463 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
1464 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
1469 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
1470 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
1471 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
1472 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
1473 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
1474 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
1476 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
1477 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
1478 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
1479 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
1480 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
1481 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
1482 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
1483 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
1484 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
1485 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
1486 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
1487 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
1488 that resets the video mode.
1490 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
1491 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
1492 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
1493 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
1494 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
1497 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
1498 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
1499 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
1500 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
1501 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
1502 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
1504 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
1505 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
1506 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
1508 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
1509 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
1510 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
1511 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
1516 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
1517 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
1518 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
1519 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
1520 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
1521 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
1522 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
1523 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
1524 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
1525 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
1526 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
1527 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
1528 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
1529 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
1532 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
1534 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
1535 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
1536 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
1537 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
1538 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
1539 directories you like.
1544 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
1545 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
1546 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
1547 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
1548 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
1549 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
1550 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
1551 should work when a volume is unnamed.
1553 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
1554 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
1555 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
1560 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
1561 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
1563 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
1564 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
1565 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
1566 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
1567 documented the name....
1569 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
1570 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
1571 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
1573 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
1574 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
1575 directory) on certain systems.
1577 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
1578 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
1583 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
1584 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
1585 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
1586 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
1587 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
1588 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
1589 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
1590 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
1591 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
1592 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
1593 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
1596 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
1597 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
1598 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
1599 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
1602 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
1603 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
1605 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
1608 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
1609 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
1610 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
1611 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
1612 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
1614 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
1615 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
1616 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
1617 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
1618 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
1619 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
1624 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
1625 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
1626 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
1627 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
1628 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
1629 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
1630 small sample of computers.
1632 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
1633 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
1634 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
1635 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
1636 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
1638 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
1643 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
1644 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
1645 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
1646 versionless initrd file.
1648 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
1649 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
1652 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
1653 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
1654 than this, but such systems are very rare.
1659 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
1660 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
1661 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
1662 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
1664 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
1665 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
1666 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
1667 directory as the kernel.
1669 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
1670 entries in refind.conf file.
1672 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
1673 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
1679 - Initial public release