code.delx.au - refind/blob - docs/refind/getting.html

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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:
  18 12/30/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.6.2</p>
  19
  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!</p>
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  86 <hr />
  87
  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>
  89
  90 <hr />
  91
  92 <p><b>Note:</b> I consider rEFInd to be <i>beta-quality software!</i> I'm discovering bugs (old and new) and fixing them every few days. 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>
  93
  94 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge</h2>
  95
  96 <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 several different forms:</p>
  97
  98 <ul>
  99
 100 <li><b><a
 101     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.2/refind-src-0.6.2.zip/download">A
 102     source code zip file</a></b>&mdash;This is useful if you want to compile
 103     the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the <a
 104     href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tianocore/">TianoCore EFI
 105     Development Kit 2 (EDK2)</a> to build my binary zip package (below),
 106     although the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi">GNU-EFI</a>
 107     development tools are also supported.</li>
 108
 109 <li><b><a
 110     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.2/refind-bin-0.6.2.zip/download">A
 111     binary zip file</a></b>&mdash;Download this if you want to install
 112     rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64
 113     computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
 114     optical disc. This zip file package includes both <i>x</i>86 (aka IA32)
 115     and <i>x</i>86-64 (aka <i>x</i>64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
 116     Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the <a
 117     href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page.</li>
 118
 119 <!--
 120 <li><b><a
 121     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.4.7/refind-bin-gnuefi-0.4.7.zip/download">A
 122     binary zip file (built with GNU-EFI)</a></b>&mdash;This package is just
 123     like the preceding one, except that it was built using the GNU-EFI
 124     development kit rather than the TianoCore EFI Development Kit 2 (EDK2)
 125     that was used to build the other binary. I originally used GNU-EFI to
 126     develop rEFInd, but the GNU-EFI toolkit doesn't support the legacy
 127     (BIOS-mode) boot calls on UEFI-based PCs, so I now consider the
 128     TianoCore build to be the primary one. (Macs can boot legacy OSes using
 129     either build.)</li>
 130 -->
 131
 132 <p class="sidebar"><b>Tip:</b> If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the <tt>install.sh</tt> program's <tt>--usedefault</tt> option, and perhaps the <tt>--alldrivers</tt> option, as in <tt class="userinput">bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers</tt> to install to the first partition on <tt>/dev/sdd</tt>. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.</p>
 133
 134 <li><b><a
 135     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.2/refind-cd-0.6.2.zip/download">A
 136     CD-R image file</a></b>&mdash;This download contains the same files as
 137     the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
 138     (and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
 139     UEFI PCs, but fails on some older Macs.) If you like it, you can then
 140     copy the files from the CD-R to your hard disk. The files are named in
 141     such a way that the disc should boot on either 64-bit (<i>x</i>86-64)
 142     or 32-bit (<i>x</i>86) EFI computers. I've included an open source EFI
 143     shell program on this disc that's not included in the binary zip file,
 144     so that you can access an EFI shell from a bootable disc even if you
 145     don't have an EFI shell available from your regular hard disk. This can
 146     be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
 147     shell.</li>
 148
 149 <li><b><a
 150     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.2/refind-0.6.2-1.src.rpm/download">Source</a>
 151     and <a
 152     href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.2/refind-0.6.2-1.x86_64.rpm/download">binary</a>
 153     RPM files</b>&mdash;These files are intended more as demonstrations than
 154     as practical packages. If you use an RPM-based <i>x</i>86-64 Linux system,
 155     though, you can install the binary RPM package. (I don't provide an
 156     equivalent 32-bit package.) Note, however, that this package's files are
 157     not signed for use with shim or Secure Boot, and it installs four
 158     filesystem drivers, which can slow down the boot process. It was also
 159     compiled with GNU-EFI, which means that it lacks the ability to boot
 160     BIOS-based OSes. Thus, I recommend using the binary zip file instead. If
 161     you do use the RPM file, be aware that it installs rEFInd directly to
 162     <tt>/boot/efi/EFI/refind</tt>, so your ESP must be mounted at
 163     <tt>/boot/efi</tt>. The post-installation script, which adds rEFInd to the
 164     NVRAM entries, requires <tt>efibootmgr</tt> and is likely to fail if you
 165     try to install from a live CD. Distribution maintainers can examine the
 166     <tt>refind.spec</tt> file in the source package and tweak it to their
 167     needs and to eliminate some or all of these deficiencies.</li>
 168
 169 <li><b><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code">Source code via
 170     git</a></b>&mdash;If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
 171     browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
 172     and updates), you can use the Sourceforge git repository. This access
 173     method is most useful to programmers, or at least to those who are
 174     familiar with programming tools. Note that if you need to ask "what's
 175     git?", this is probably not the best way for you to obtain rEFInd.</li>
 176
 177 </ul>
 178
 179 <p>If you're using a platform other than <i>x</i>86 or <i>x</i>86-64, 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>
 180
 181 <p>To extract the files from the zip file images I've provided, you'll need 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>
 182
 183 <p>You should be able to create a bootable USB flash drive from either the binary zip file or the CD-R image file; just treat the flash drive as if it were a hard disk and install rEFInd as described on the <a href="installing.html">installation page.</a> Using the fallback boot loader name of <tt>EFI/boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is likely to be the most useful way to install rEFInd to a removable medium.</p>
 184
 185 <h2>Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories</h2>
 186
 187 <p>I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:</p>
 188
 189 <ul>
 190
 191 <li><b>Arch Linux</b>&mdash;You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
 192     repositories, in both a stable version (the <tt>refind-efi</tt> package
 193     installable via <tt>pacman</tt>) and an experimental release built from
 194     rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
 195     name <tt>refind-efi-git</tt>. The git release is likely to include
 196     pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
 197     poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
 198     Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
 199     UEFI-based PCs.</li>
 200
 201 <li><b>The <a href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/">Nix Packages
 202     collection</a></b>&mdash;This site creates packages for a number of
 203     OSes using its own packaging system.</li>
 204
 205 <li><b><a
 206     href="https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=refind&project=home%3Amichael-chang%3AUEFI">OpenSUSE
 207     Build Service (OBS)</a></b>&mdash;This site holds a binary x86-64 build
 208     of rEFInd that should install on any RPM-based distribution. It doesn't
 209     completely set up rEFInd, though; it just places the rEFInd files in
 210     the <tt>/usr/share/refind</tt> directory, and a copy of
 211     <tt>install.sh</tt> as <tt>/usr/sbin/refind_install</tt>.
 212     Unfortunately, the script makes assumptions about the locations of
 213     files and so is useless when files are moved around in this way. Thus,
 214     you'll need to install manually after installing this RPM, so you might
 215     as well download the rEFInd binary <tt>.zip</tt> file from Sourceforge
 216     instead.</li>
 217
 218 <li><b>Slackware</b>&mdash;Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
 219     build, <a href="http://franck-barbenoire.fr/spip.php?article198">this
 220     site</a> has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
 221     14.0.</li>
 222
 223 </ul>
 224
 225 <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>
 226
 227 <hr />
 228
 229 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 230
 231 <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>
 232
 233 <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>
 234
 235 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 236
 237 <p><a href="installing.html">Learn how to install rEFInd</a></p>
 238
 239   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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