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