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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 6/23/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.4</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>The default_selection option in refind.conf could be improved by
 161         supporting a list of default options, so that if the first item
 162         isn't found, rEFInd will try to boot the second one in the list,
 163         and so on. This could be handy in case a driver fails to load, or
 164         to provide an override in case the user inserts a specific
 165         removable disk&mdash;by placing the removable disk's name first in
 166         the list, it will take precedence over the normal hard disk
 167         default.</li>
 168
 169     <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the default_selection might
 170         be expanded to support some form of specification of disk types, as
 171         in a special entry for any optical disk or any external disk, no
 172         matter what its name is.</li>
 173
 174     <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
 175         and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
 176         boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
 177
 178     <li>Various options (<tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>, <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt>,
 179         <tt>scan_driver_dirs</tt>, etc.) refer to directories or files,
 180         either on the ESP or on all partitions. A way to identify specific
 181         partitions for these options would be useful in some
 182         situations.</li>
 183
 184     </ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
 185
 186 <li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
 187
 188     <ul>
 189
 190     <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
 191         UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
 192         Macs&mdash;or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
 193         UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
 194         work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, <a
 195         href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
 196         thoughts.)</li>
 197
 198     <li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
 199         Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
 200         <tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
 201         This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
 202         Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
 203         parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
 204         "generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
 205         firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
 206         other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
 207         mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). Some of these
 208         problems can be overcome by converting both strings to be compared
 209         to one case before doing the comparison, but others aren't so easy,
 210         since I think <tt>StriCmp()</tt> is being called internally to the
 211         EFI. In any event, it'd be nice to fix some of these problems.
 212         OTOH, this is a workaround for a bug on just one EFI
 213         implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
 214         let it go.</li>
 215
 216     <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based
 217         PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
 218         fixed.</li>
 219
 220     <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
 221         UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
 222         Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
 223         do it.</li>
 224
 225     <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
 226         ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
 227         This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
 228
 229     <li>The "scanning for new boot loaders" message that appears during the
 230         re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon would be
 231         nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking nature of
 232         EFI.</li>
 233
 234     <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
 235         re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
 236         have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
 237         caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
 238         shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
 239
 240     <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
 241         similar problems.</li>
 242
 243     </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
 244
 245 <li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
 246
 247     <ul>
 248
 249     <li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
 250         it would.</li>
 251
 252     <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
 253         BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
 254         can see how it could be for some people.</li>
 255
 256     <li>I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
 257         whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
 258         Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
 259         understanding is that it will work correctly <i>if</i> rEFInd is
 260         installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
 261         See <a
 262         href="https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/5c7d0195/">this
 263         forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
 264
 265     <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
 266         boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
 267         One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
 268         stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
 269         boot loader file.</li>
 270
 271     <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
 272         loader settings&mdash;say, to disable one specific boot loader or
 273         change its icon.</li>
 274
 275     <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>,
 276         <tt>bless</tt>, or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot
 277         set would be useful.</li>
 278
 279     <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful.
 280         This would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk
 281         boot. Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be
 282         launched much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
 283
 284     <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
 285         single-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
 286
 287     <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
 288         purposes.</li>
 289
 290     <li>Going further, the ability to load arbitrary other fonts, ideally
 291         in a standard format, would be desirable for theming purposes.</li>
 292
 293     <li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
 294         priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
 295         written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
 296         can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
 297
 298     <li>A way to "source" one configuration file from another one would be
 299         helpful for some types of configuration scripts. (This would enable
 300         overriding options in a secondary file without modifying the
 301         default original file, for instance.)</li>
 302
 303     </ul></li> <!-- New features -->
 304
 305     <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
 306
 307     <ul>
 308
 309     <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are required. Given the recent
 310         shift to ext4fs, that should be the priority; however, other Linux
 311         filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
 312         additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
 313         RAID setups would be useful, too.</li>
 314
 315     <li>As detailed on the <a href="drivers.html">drivers page,</a> there
 316         are performance issues with the drivers on some systems. I suspect
 317         that most "real" computers aren't greatly affected (in my tests,
 318         the problem is worst with VirtualBox, and the next worst is a
 319         system that uses <a
 320         href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/">DUET</a>). Nonetheless,
 321         I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.</li>
 322
 323     <li>The driver installation procedure could be improved, perhaps by
 324         adding support for drivers to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script.</li>
 325
 326     <li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
 327         what the volume's real label is.</li>
 328
 329     <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
 330         to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
 331         desirable.</li>
 332
 333     </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
 334
 335 </ul>
 336
 337 <hr />
 338
 339 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 340
 341 <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>
 342
 343 <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>
 344
 345 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 346
 347 <p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>
 348
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