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