9 - Inclusion of drivers for ISO-9660, HFS+, ReiserFS, and ext2fs. Most of
10 these drivers originated with rEFIt, although the HFS+ driver seems to
11 have come from Oracle's VirtualBox, with some files from Apple. I hadn't
12 included these drivers previously because the build process proved
13 challenging. As it is, they don't work on my Mac Mini, I suspect because
14 the build process with the UDK2010 development kit may not work with the
15 EFI 1.x that Apple uses.
17 - Addition of support for drivers in the "drivers_{arch}" subdirectory of
18 the main rEFInd binary directory (e.g., "drivers_x64" or "drivers_ia32").
19 Drivers may continue to be placed in the "drivers" subdirectory.
21 - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to
22 eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it
23 relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even
24 implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs).
26 - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration
27 file when launched from rEFInd.
32 - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've
33 received reports that it's not working as intended.
35 - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its
36 configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan
37 those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable
38 scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd;
39 however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the
40 configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell.
42 - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the
43 scroll-left arrow under some circumstances.
48 - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name
49 of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or
50 sample configuration file for a full description.
52 - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture
53 code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic
54 refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The
55 program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name
56 refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.)
58 - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be
59 used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile
62 - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the
63 second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row.
68 - Improved menu navigation:
69 - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up &
70 down arrows move between rows.
71 - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both
72 text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at
73 the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in
74 graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen.
76 - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries
77 when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too
78 many entries exist to fit on the screen.
83 - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X
84 systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires
85 no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it
86 to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the
87 currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to
88 the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script
91 - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text
94 - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition.
96 - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or
97 Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning
104 - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root
105 directory" messages under some conitions on Macs.
107 - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a
108 directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader
109 is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a
110 directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory
111 of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders
112 will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel
113 maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most
114 recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default,
115 obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new
116 kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default
117 directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp.
119 - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files
120 for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be
121 named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For
122 instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns.
123 (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.)
125 - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when
126 the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set.
131 - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and
132 giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major
133 milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has
134 been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports,
135 they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known
136 bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users.
138 - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video
139 resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024
140 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported.
141 If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message
142 appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key
143 to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600).
144 Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video
145 modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an
146 incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode).
147 This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs.
148 CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't
149 handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS
150 that resets the video mode.
152 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an
153 EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used
154 graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still
155 don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See
156 comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more
159 - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux
160 kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot
161 loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't
162 give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect
163 unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used
164 to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons.
166 - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI,
167 and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both
168 ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders.
170 - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the
171 filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant
172 field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such
173 situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown".
178 - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and
179 enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the
180 original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could
181 compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under
182 Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory
183 on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a
184 "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As
185 always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of
186 the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another
187 filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who
188 compile from source code should note that implementing this feature
189 necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm
190 currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't
191 know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI
194 - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes.
196 - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for
197 EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every
198 subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these
199 directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan
200 list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or
201 directories you like.
206 - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This
207 option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by
208 "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the
209 FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number
210 followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a
211 filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based
212 on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but
213 should work when a volume is unnamed.
215 - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk
216 mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at
217 least some Intel motherboards, maybe others.
222 - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with
223 Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory.
225 - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in
226 .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom
227 volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a
228 confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and
229 documented the name....
231 - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root
232 directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon
233 is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location.
235 - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd
236 was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's
237 directory) on certain systems.
239 - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly)
240 instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set.
245 - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of
246 "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This
247 option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old
248 "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the
249 order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit"
250 option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return
251 to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is
252 somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as
253 well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most
254 MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration,
255 I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless
258 - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"),
259 and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label",
260 "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and
261 disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display
264 - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce
265 the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once.
267 - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD
270 - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary,
271 but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more
272 likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this
273 feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The
274 source is readily available from the TianoCore project.)
276 - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at
277 /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also
278 recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will
279 appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename,
280 which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from
281 rEFIt, is no longer valid.
286 - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program
287 after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system
288 differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error
289 messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one
290 system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect
291 though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my
292 small sample of computers.
294 - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the
295 filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI
296 booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to
297 refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name,
298 with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present.
300 - Added logo for Arch Linux.
305 - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub
306 support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now
307 permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE*
308 versionless initrd file.
310 - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label
311 was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution
314 - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with
315 small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller
316 than this, but such systems are very rare.
321 - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring
322 of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot
323 loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP
324 (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles.
326 - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub
327 loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files
328 and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same
329 directory as the kernel.
331 - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza
332 entries in refind.conf file.
334 - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the
335 filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory.
341 - Initial public release