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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: The Future of rEFInd</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of 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:
  18 5/20/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.0</p>
  19
  20
  21 <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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  86
  87 <hr />
  88
  89 <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>
  90
  91 <hr />
  92
  93 <p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>
  94
  95 <p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>
  96
  97 <p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>
  98
  99 <ul>
 100
 101 <li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>
 102
 103     <ul>
 104
 105     <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
 106         I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
 107         unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
 108         add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
 109         bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
 110         systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
 111         try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
 112
 113     <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so
 114         rEFInd's boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have
 115         artistic talent and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel
 116         free to send it to me. I won't make any final decision about
 117         changes until at least June 30 of 2012.</li>
 118
 119     <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
 120         theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
 121         theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
 122         replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
 123         Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
 124         (or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
 125         information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
 126         href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 127
 128     </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->
 129
 130 <li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>
 131
 132     <ul>
 133
 134     <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
 135         or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
 136         "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
 137         like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
 138         way to test such changes.</li>
 139
 140     <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of
 141         various graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to
 142         version 0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with
 143         800x600 and smaller displays because of an inability to properly
 144         crop the graphics fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2,
 145         I've put a band-aid on this problem by reducing the field size so
 146         that it now works on 800x600 displays, but smaller displays still
 147         suffer from this problem. This is just an example of the
 148         inflexibility of certain layout issues within rEFInd.</li>
 149
 150     <li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple
 151         image sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file,
 152         rEFInd can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the
 153         desired size would be useful.</li>
 154
 155     <li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
 156         loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
 157         from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
 158         label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</li>
 159
 160     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 161         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 162         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 163
 164     </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 165
 166 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 167
 168     <ul>
 169
 170     <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
 171         UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
 172         Macs&mdash;or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
 173         UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
 174         work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, <a
 175         href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
 176         thoughts.)</li>
 177
 178     <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
 179         Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 180         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 181         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 182         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 183         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 184         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 185         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 186         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 187         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
 188         problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
 189         to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
 190         since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
 191         EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
 192         OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
 193         implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
 194         let it go.</li>
 195
 196     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based PCs.
 197         On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 198         fixed.</li>
 199
 200     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 201         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 202         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 203         do it.</li>
 204
 205     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 206         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 207         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 208
 209     <li>The re-scan feature renders the user interface immobile until
 210         the re-scan is complete. This is usually just a second or two,
 211         but it can be longer if an optical disc needs to be spun up.
 212         Adding a temporary "scanning media" notice would be helpful.</li>
 213
 214     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 215         similar problems.</p>
 216
 217     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 218
 219 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 220
 221     <ul>
 222
 223     <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
 224         it would.</li>
 225
 226     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 227         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 228         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 229
 230     <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 231         whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
 232         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
 233         understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
 234         installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
 235         See <a
 236         href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
 237         forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
 238
 239     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 240         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt>
 241         file.</li>
 242
 243     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 244         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 245         change its icon.</li>
 246
 247     <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>,
 248         <tt>bless</tt>, or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot
 249         set would be useful.</li>
 250
 251     <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful.
 252         This would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk
 253         boot. Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be
 254         launched much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
 255
 256     <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
 257         single-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
 258
 259     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 260
 261     <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 262
 263     <ul>
 264
 265     <li>The drivers I've built fail to load on a 32-bit Mac Mini; I get an
 266         "incompatible version" error message at an EFI shell, or an error
 267         code of 80000019 when rEFInd tries to load them. (These two
 268         messages are equivalent.) I suspect the problem is related to the
 269         EFI version 1.<i>x</i> used on the Mac, as opposed to UEFI
 270         2.<i>x</i> used on PCs. I'm looking into the problem. In the
 271         meantime, if you have this problem, I recommend tracking down
 272         equivalent drivers from other sources. (See the <a
 273         href="drivers.html">drivers page</a> for some pointers.) I'd
 274         appreciate <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">hearing from
 275         you</a> if you have problems along these lines. Please tell me what
 276         type of computer you're using, and especially the firmware version
 277         data (from rEFInd's "about" screen). This may help me narrow down
 278         the cause.</li>
 279
 280     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are required. Given the recent
 281         shift to ext4fs, that should be the priority; however, other Linux
 282         filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
 283         additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
 284         RAID setups would be useful, too.</li>
 285
 286     <li>As detailed on the <a href="drivers.html">drivers page,</a> there
 287         are performance issues with the drivers on some systems. I suspect
 288         that most "real" computers aren't greatly affected (in my tests,
 289         the problem is worst with VirtualBox, and the next worst is a
 290         system that uses <a
 291         href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/">DUET</a>). Nonetheless,
 292         I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.
 293
 294     <li>The driver installation procedure could be improved, perhaps by
 295         adding support for drivers to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script.
 296
 297     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 298
 299 </ul>
 300
 301 <hr />
 302
 303 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 304
 305 <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>
 306
 307 <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>
 308
 309 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 310
 311 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 312
 313   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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