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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />Getting rEFInd</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17   <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 3/26/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.3</p>
  18
  19 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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  85 <hr />
  86
  87 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
  88
  89 <hr />
  90
  91 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>alpha-quality software!</i> Although rEFIt 0.14, upon which rEFInd is based, is beta-quality, I've changed a great deal of the code, and I'm still learning about it. I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every day or two. That said, rEFInd is a usable program in its current form on many systems. If you have problems, feel free to drop me a line.</p>
  92
  93 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  94
  95 <p>You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/refind/">its SourceForge page.</a> Note that rEFInd is OS-independent&mdash;it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in three different forms:</p>
  96
  97 <ul>
  98
  99 <li><b><a
 100     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.3/refind-src-0.2.3.zip/download">A
 101     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to
 102     compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 103     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a> development
 104     tools. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to
 105     that toolchain is theoretically possible, but I've not attempted
 106     it.</li>
 107
 108 <li><b><a
 109     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.3/refind-bin-0.2.3.zip/download">A
 110     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 111     rEFInd on an x86 or x86-64 computer and have no need to test rEFInd
 112     first by booting it on an optical disc. This zip file package includes
 113     both x86 (aka IA32) and x86-64 (aka x64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of
 114     rEFInd. Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on
 115     the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 116
 117 <li><b><a
 118     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.2.3/refind-cd-0.2.3.zip/download">A
 119     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 120     the zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd without
 121     installing it first. If you like it, you can then copy the files from
 122     the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in such a way that the
 123     disc should boot on either 64-bit (x86-64) or 32-bit (x86) EFI
 124     computers. Note that there's a bug that causes rEFInd to complain about
 125     invalid parameters while scanning various directories. You can safely
 126     ignore this message, but you'll need to press a key to dismiss it.</li>
 127
 128 </ul>
 129
 130 <p>If you're using another platform, you can give rEFInd a try; however, you'll need to build it from source code yourself or track down a binary from another source. (Perhaps by the time you read this it will be included in Linux distributions built for unusual CPUs.)</p>
 131
 132 <p>If you download a zip file, you'll need to extract the files with a tool such as <tt>unzip</tt>, which is included with Linux and Mac OS X. Numerous Windows utilities also support this format, such as <a href="http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/">PKZIP</a> and <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip.</a></p>
 133
 134 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 135
 136 <p>If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57632">stable</a> and <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=57966">git (experimental)</a> releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.</p>
 137
 138 <p>To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">drop me a line.</a></p>
 139
 140 <hr />
 141
 142 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 143
 144 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
 145
 146 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
 147
 148 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 149
 150 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 151
 152   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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