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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Revisions
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12 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:
<br />Revisions
</h1>
14 <p class=
"subhead">by Roderick W. Smith,
<a
15 href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
</a></p>
17 <p>Last Web page update:
5/
20/
2012</p>
20 <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!
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88 <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>
92 <p>The following summarizes changes in rEFInd's public releases:
</p>
96 <li><b>0.4.0 (
5/
20/
2012)
</b>—I've bumped up this version number more than usual to reflect the addition of four filesystem drivers (for ext2fs, ReiserFS, HFS+, and ISO-
9660) to the rEFInd package. These drivers originate with the original rEFIt, VirtualBox, and Clover boot loader projects. You can learn more on the
<a href=
"drivers.html">drivers page.
</a> To facilitate inclusion of drivers on the CD image, rEFInd also now supports reading drivers from architecture-specific subdirectories
—<tt>drivers_x64
</tt> and
<tt>drivers_ia32
</tt> for
<i>x
</i>86-
64 and
<i>x
</i>86 systems, respectively. This version also adds the ability to eject removable media on some Macs (this won't work on UEFI-based PCs, unfortunately). Finally, this version fixes a problem that could cause GRUB
2 to be unable to read its configuration file in some settings when launched from rEFInd.
</li>
98 <li><b>0.3.5 (
5/
15/
2012)
</b>—This version's biggest new feature is the ability to re-scan for boot loaders after launching the program. This is done by pressing the Esc key, which causes rEFInd to re-read its configuration file, to tell the EFI to reconnect all disks, and to do a fresh scan of all disks for loaders. This is useful if you insert a removable disk after starting the computer, if rEFInd starts before a disk has fully settled, if you make a change to the configuration file, or if you manually load a driver. This version also fixes a minor bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced with a left-pointing arrow under some circumstances; and I've removed the scan for a BIOS Boot Partition that I added in
0.3.2, since I'm told it isn't launching correctly. (BIOS-mode GRUB
2 can still be launched on Macs from its boot code in the MBR.)
</li>
100 <li><b>0.3.4 (
5/
9/
2012)
</b>—The biggest change to this version is the addition of the
<tt>icons_dir
</tt> configuration file token, which enables you to specify a directory that holds icons that override those in the default
<tt>icons
</tt> subdirectory. See the
<a href=
"themes.html">Theming rEFInd
</a> and
<a href=
"configfile.html">Configuring the Boot Manager
</a> pages for details. This version also reduces flicker when moving your selection around the screen and modifies the
<tt>install.sh
</tt> script so that it can be used directly after building rEFInd from source code. Related to this, building from source now creates a binary that includes an architecture code
—<tt>refind_ia32.efi
</tt> or
<tt>refind_x64.efi
</tt> rather than
<tt>refind.efi
</tt>.
</li>
102 <li><b>0.3.3 (
5/
6/
2012)
</b>—I've focused on user interface improvements for this release. The biggest improvement is in the text-mode interface, which suffered from assorted display glitches in previous releases. These have now been fixed, so the text-mode interface should be more usable. I've also fine-tuned the use of keyboard keys, particularly in graphical mode. The up and down arrow keys now move between the two rows of the display, and Page Up and Page Down scroll the first row if it's too big for the display. (They'll also move between rows, but only when at the end of the first row or the start of the second.) Returning from a failed loader or a tool or built-in function now renders that tag as the currently-selected item, rather than setting the default loader as active, as happened with previous versions.
</li>
104 <li><b>0.3.2 (
5/
4/
2012)
</b>—rEFInd's core functionality changes very little with this version; I've tweaked the detection of BIOS-mode boot loaders to keep unbootable FAT partitions created under Linux and Windows out of the boot list, while adding detection of GRUB BIOS Boot Partitions to the list. I've also made a change that improves screen-clearing when launching EFI utilities and OSes in text mode. The major change to this version is the addition of a new Linux/OS X installation script,
<tt>install.sh
</tt>. In most cases, this makes it possible to install rEFInd simply by typing
<tt class=
"userinput">./install.sh
</tt> from the rEFInd package directory; however, you should see the
<a href=
"installing.html">Installing rEFInd
</a> page for details. In some cases, manual installation may still be required. Also, you may prefer to copy over the old rEFInd program file with the new one when upgrading.
</li>
106 <li><b>0.3.1 (
4/
27/
2012)
</b>—You'll find a few minor enhancements and bug fixes in this version, none of which affect the configuration files. rEFInd now sorts its boot loader entries
<i>within each directory
</i> by date, with the newest items first. The intent is that you can specify a directory name as the
<tt>default_selection
</tt> and the most recent boot loader in that directory will become the default. This may obviate the need to adjust the default after adding a new Linux kernel with EFI stub loader support. I've also improved the handling of
<tt>.icns
</tt> files for Linux kernels that lack
<tt>.efi
</tt> extensions; loader-specific icons for these kernels should now take the name of the kernel plus
<tt>.icns
</tt>—for instance,
<tt>vmlinuz-
0.3.2.icns
</tt> for
<tt>vmlinuz-
0.3.2</tt>. rEFInd also now hides all
<tt>.icns
</tt> files from the boot loader list. Finally, this version fixes a bug, introduced in version
0.3.0, that could cause spurious
<tt>Unsupported while scanning the root directory
</tt> errors under some conditions on Macs.
</li>
108 <li><b>0.3.0 (
4/
22/
2012)
</b>—This version marks the official transition from alpha to beta status for rEFInd. This isn't because of any important objective milestone being passed; it's just that rEFInd has been used by many people who have reported no show-stopping bugs, so I'm now confident that rEFInd is stable enough for general use. That's not to say it's perfect; it still has numerous
<a href=
"todo.html">known bugs and limitations.
</a> That's why it's still beta. To get down to specifics, this version adds two new configuration file tokens:
<tt>resolution
</tt>, which sets the screen resolution; and
<tt>scan_all_linux_kernels
</tt>, which adds Linux kernel files to the boot loader list even if they lack
<tt>.efi
</tt> filename extensions. See the
<a href=
"configfile.html">Configuring the Boot Manager
</a> page for details on these new options. I've also fixed some bugs: One that sometimes caused Macs to crash when returning from the EFI shell or other programs; another that caused rEFInd to fail to scan filesystems if the filesystem driver didn't return a volume name; and a third that caused rEFInd to fail to detect boot loaders depending on the case of the filename on some EFIs (this is really a workaround for an EFI implementation bug). The first of these is a
<i>very
</i> tentative fix and it could have negative effects on some systems (non-Mac EFI
1.x systems or Macs that weren't affected by the bug in other recent releases), so be sure to
<a href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">contact me
</a> if rEFInd crashes or otherwise misbehaves after you use an EFI shell.
</li>
110 <li><b>0.2.7 (
4/
19/
2012)
</b>—I've added two new tokens to the
<tt>refind.conf
</tt> file, with associated new functionality. The new
<tt>scan_driver_dirs
</tt> option tells rEFInd where to scan for EFI drivers, in addition to the default of the
<tt>drivers
</tt> subdirectory of the rEFInd installation directory. For more on EFI drivers, see
<a href=
"drivers.html">Using EFI Drivers.
</a> Note that previous versions of rEFInd couldn't load drivers at all, although they could make use of hardware and filesystems activated by drivers loaded before rEFInd launched. The second new token is
<tt>also_scan_dirs
</tt>, which adds arbitrary directories to the list that rEFInd scans for boot loaders. (Without this option, rEFInd scans each volume's boot directory and every subdirectory of the
<tt>/EFI
</tt> directory, with the exception of
<tt>/EFI/tools
</tt> and rEFInd's own directory.) This version also fixes a minor bug that caused rEFInd to sometimes include itself in the list of OS options. Finally, if you build rEFInd yourself, you should be aware that it now requires a newer version of the GNU-EFI library than it required in the past. See the
<tt>BUILDING.txt
</tt> file, included in the source code package, for details.
</li>
112 <li><b>0.2.6 (
4/
14/
2012)
</b>—This version provides one bug fix and one new feature. The bug was introduced in version
0.2.5 and prevents rEFInd from identifying a Linux initial RAM disk file on some (but not all) EFI implementations. The new feature is the
<tt>volume
</tt> stanza token, which enables you to manually load a boot program from a filesystem other than the one from which rEFInd launched. You can specify a volume either by its label (as in
<tt>volume KERNELS
</tt> to load from the volume with a filesystem name
<tt>KERNELS
</tt>) or by number followed by a colon (as in
<tt>volume
0:
</tt> for the first filesystem or
<tt>volume
1:
</tt> for the second). See the
<a href=
"configfile.html">Configuring the Boot Manager
</a> page for more on this new feature.
</li>
114 <li><b>0.2.5 (
4/
9/
2012)
</b>—Icon-handling improvements are key in this version. I've fixed a bug that caused icons to be replaced with ugly
"not-found" default icons when rEFInd was launched in certain ways. I've also added support for
<tt>.VolumeIcon.icns
</tt> and
<tt>.VolumeBadge.icns
</tt> files to set loader tags and disk-type badges, respectively. (See the
<a href=
"configfile.html">configuration page
</a> for details.) I've also fixed a bug that prevented rEFInd from finding the correct initial RAM disk for Linux kernels stored in the root directory of a partition.
</li>
116 <li><b>0.2.4 (
4/
5/
2012)
</b>—This version adds support for a new location for EFI shells (
<tt>shell
<tt class=
"variable">arch
</tt>.efi
</tt> in the ESP's root directory. It also adds two new
<tt>refind.conf
</tt> options:
<tt>showtools
</tt> and
<tt>max_tags
</tt>, and removes another one (
<tt>disable
</tt>). The options available in
<tt>hideui
</tt> are now essentially a combination of what
<tt>disable
</tt> and
<tt>hideui
</tt> did, minus functionality now present in
<tt>showtools
</tt>. I made these changes to reduce redundancy and to increase flexibility. See the
<a href=
"configfile.html">Configuring the Boot Manager
</a> page for details.
</li>
118 <li><b>0.2.3 (
3/
26/
2012)
</b>—I've changed the Linux kernel configuration filename from
<tt>linux.conf
</tt> to
<tt>refind_linux.conf
</tt> with this version, to avoid a name collision with a planned future Linux kernel ability to read its options from a file called
<tt>linux.conf
</tt>. This version also includes a tentative bug fix for a problem that caused rEFInd to hang upon launching the second program (say, a boot loader after using a shell) on some systems; but on some computers, this fix causes an (apparently harmless) error message about
"(re)opening our installation volume" upon returning from the first program. I've also added a logo for Arch Linux.
</li>
120 <li><b>0.2.2 (
3/
23/
2012)
</b>—This version fixes three bugs: One caused submenus to not appear on systems with screens of
800x600 or smaller; another caused rEFInd to hang when boot loader names were too long; and the third caused the program to fail when Linux kernels and their initial RAM disk files lacked version numbers.
</li>
122 <li><b>0.2.1 (
3/
19/
2012)
</b>—This version adds the ability to auto-scan Linux kernels with EFI stub loader support, provided a suitable
<tt>linux.conf
</tt> file exists in the kernel's directory. It also adds support for manual specification of submenus in
<tt>refind.conf
</tt>.
</li>
124 <li><b>0.2.0 (
3/
14/
2012)
</b>—This is the program's initial public release. It's based on rEFIt
0.14 plus a large number of patches taken from Debian's Linux-compilable rEFIt package. I then added UEFI-specific fixes, support for OS definition stanzas in the configuration file, a scrolling icon list on the main menu, and other minor improvements. This release has quite a few
<a href=
"todo.html">known bugs and limitations.
</a></li>
130 <p>copyright
© 2012 by Roderick W. Smith
</p>
132 <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>
134 <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>
136 <p><a href=
"index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page
</a></p>
138 <p><a href=
"todo.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd
</a></p>
140 <p><a href=
"http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return
</a> to my main Web page.
</p>