0.3.6 (?/??/2012): ------------------ - Added new feature to eject CDs (and other removable media): Press F12 to eject all such media. This function works only on some Macs, though (it relies on an Apple-specific EFI extension, and this extension isn't even implemented on all Macs, much less on UEFI-based PCs). - Fixed a problem that could cause GRUB 2 to fail to read its configuration file when launched from rEFInd. 0.3.5 (5/15/2012): ------------------ - Removed the GRUB 2 detection "reciped" added with 0.3.2, since I've received reports that it's not working as intended. - Added re-scan feature: Press the Esc key to have rEFInd re-read its configuration file, tell the EFI to scan for new filesystems, and re-scan those filesystems for boot loaders. The main purpose is to enable scanning a new removable medium that you insert after launching rEFInd; however, it can also be used to immediately implement changes to the configuration file or new drivers you load from an EFI shell. - Fixed a bug that could cause the scroll-right arrow to be replaced by the scroll-left arrow under some circumstances. 0.3.4 (5/9/2012): ----------------- - Added new configuration file option: "icons_dir", which sets the name of the subdirectory in which icons are found. See the documentation or sample configuration file for a full description. - Modified Makefile to generate rEFInd binary that includes architecture code -- refind_ia32.efi or refind_x64.efi, rather than the generic refind.efi. This is done mainly to help the install.sh script. The program can be named anything you like on the disk. (The generic name refind.efi is used on unknown architectures.) - Improved install.sh script: Fixed bug on OS X 10.7 and enable it to be used after building from source code (or via new "make install" Makefile target). - Improved screen redraws to produce less flicker when moving among the second-row tags or to the last tag on the first row. 0.3.3 (5/6/2012): ----------------- - Improved menu navigation: - In graphics mode, left & right arrow keys move left & right, while up & down arrows move between rows. - Page Up and Page Down now move through chunks of visible tags (in both text & graphics modes), jumping from one row to another only when at the edge of the row. In text mode, the "rows" are broken down as in graphics mode, but they aren't visibly distinguished on the screen. - Improved text-mode use: rEFInd now displays the proper number of entries when first started in text mode and scrolling is done sensibly when too many entries exist to fit on the screen. 0.3.2 (5/4/2012): ----------------- - Added the install.sh script to install rEFInd on Linux and Mac OS X systems. This script must be run as root (or via sudo). It requires no options, but on Mac OS X, passing it the "esp" option causes it to install rEFInd on the computer's ESP rather than the default of the currently OS X boot partition. (Under Linux, the default is to install to the ESP.) Note that there may be some unusual cases in which this script will fail to work. - Does a better job of clearing the screen when launching OSes in text mode. - Added detection "recipe" for GRUB 2's BIOS Boot Partition. - Fixed bogus detection of ESPs created by Linux's mkdosfs utility or Windows as bootable partitions when "scanfor" includes BIOS scanning options. 0.3.1 (4/27/2012): ------------------ - Fixed bug that caused spurious "Unsupported while scanning the root directory" messages under some conitions on Macs. - Modified loader scanning code to sort boot loader entries within a directory by modification time, so that the most recently-modified loader is first among those in a given directory. Thus, if you specify a directory name (or volume name, for loaders stored in the root directory of a volume) as the default_selection, the most recent of those loaders will be the default. This is intended to help with Linux kernel maintenance when using the EFI stub loader; set up this way, the most recent kernel copied to your kernel directory will be the default, obviating the need to adjust the refind.conf file when adding a new kernel. If you want to change the default among those in the default directory, you can use "touch" to adjust the modification timestamp. - Tweaked code to find loader-specific .icns file so that it finds files for Linux kernels without .efi extensions. In this case, files should be named the same as the kernels they match, but with .icns extensions. For instance, bzImage-3.3.2 should have an icon called bzImage-3.3.2.icns. (The old code would have looked for an icon called bzImage-3.3.icns.) - Eliminated bogus OS loader tags for filenames that end in ".icns" when the scan_all_linux_kernels option is set. 0.3.0 (4/22/2012): ------------------ - I'm officially upgrading this project's status from "alpha" to "beta" and giving it a bump from 0.2.x to 0.3.0. This doesn't reflect any major milestone with this version; rather, it reflects my sense that rEFInd has been "out there" for a while, and although I've gotten bug reports, they've been minor and/or have been fixed. The program still has known bugs, but my impression is that it is, overall, usable by ordinary users. - Added "resolution" option to refind.conf, which enables setting the video resolution. To use it, pass two numeric values, as in "resolution 1024 768" to use a 1024x768 video mode. Note that not all modes are supported. If you specify a non-supported video mode on a UEFI system, a message appears listing the supported video modes and you must then press a key to continue, using the default video mode (usually 800x600). Unfortunately, I don't know the calls to get a list of supported video modes on older EFI 1.x systems (including Macs), so on Macs setting an incorrect video mode silently fails (you keep using the default mode). This makes changing your video mode a hit-or-miss proposition on Macs. CAUTION: It's possible to set a legal video mode that your monitor can't handle, in which case you'll get a blank display until you boot an OS that resets the video mode. - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused rEFInd to crash when returning from an EFI shell or other programs on Macs, particularly when rEFInd used graphical mode. I'm not 100% sure this bug is squashed because I still don't understand the cause and I only have one Mac for testing. See comments in the ReinitRefitLib() function in refit/lib.c for more details. - Added new refind.conf option: scan_all_linux_kernels, which causes Linux kernels that lack ".efi" extensions to be included in scans for EFI boot loaders. This may help integration with Linux distributions that don't give their kernels such names by default. Beware, though: It can detect unwanted files, such as older non-stub-loader kernels or .icns files used to give kernels with .efi extensions custom icons. - Improved EFI boot loader detection on boards with Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI, and perhaps other EFIs with a buggy StriCmp() function. Files with both ".efi" and ".EFI" extensions should now be detected as boot loaders. - Fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to fail to scan for drivers if the filesystem driver didn't set a volume name (that is, if the relevant field was set to NULL rather than even an empty string). In such situations, rEFInd now reports the volume name as "Unknown". 0.2.7 (4/19/2012): ------------------ - After much trial and tribulation, I've overcome a GNU-EFI limitation and enabled rEFInd to load EFI drivers. This feature was present in the original build of rEFIt but was removed in the versions that could compile under Linux, but now it's back -- and still being compiled under Linux! To use it, you should place your drivers in a convenient directory on the ESP (or whatever partition you use to launch rEFInd) and add a "scan_driver_dirs" entry to refind.conf to tell rEFInd where to look. (As always, you should specify the driver directory relative to the root of the filesystem.) Note that you can't launch drivers from another filesystem; they must be on the same volume that holds rEFInd. Those who compile from source code should note that implementing this feature necessitated using a more recent version of the GNU-EFI library. I'm currently using version 3.0p, and version 3.0i does NOT work. I don't know where the change occurred, but you may need to upgrade your GNU-EFI installation. - Fixed bug that caused rEFInd to show up in its own menu sometimes. - Added new refind.conf token: also_scan_dirs. When scanning volumes for EFI boot loaders, rEFInd always scans the root directory and every subdirectory of the /EFI directory, but it doesn't recurse into these directories. The also_scan_dirs token adds more directories to the scan list. It defaults to "elilo,boot", but you can set it to any directory or directories you like. 0.2.6 (4/14/2012): ------------------ - Added "volume" keyword to configuration file's stanza options. This option changes the volume from which subsequent files (specified by "loader" and "icon") are loaded. You pass "volume" the name/label of the FILESYSTEM you want to use (not the GPT partition name), or a number followed by a colon (e.g., "1:"). The former should reliably identify a filesystem, assuming the name is unique. The latter assigns numbers based on the order in which they're scanned, which may not be as reliable but should work when a volume is unnamed. - Fixed bug in 0.2.5 that caused failure of Linux initial RAM disk mapping on some (but not all) systems. Affected computers include at least some Intel motherboards, maybe others. 0.2.5 (4/9/2012): ----------------- - Fixed bug that caused an inability to associate initial RAM disks with Linux kernels stored in a volume's root directory. - Volume badges (that override default badges) are now stored in .VolumeBadge.icns. Although undocumented, rEFInd formerly loaded custom volume badges from .VolumeIcon.icns. This carryover from rEFIt was a confusing name, given the next (new) feature, so I've changed and documented the name.... - Added ability to set a default icon for a loader stored in the root directory of a volume: The icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns. This icon is also used for Mac OS X volumes booted from the standard location. - Fixed bug that caused icons to drop back to generic icons when rEFInd was launched in certain ways (such as from an EFI shell in rEFInd's directory) on certain systems. - Fixed bug that caused "unknown disable flag" to be shown (very briefly) instead of "unknown hideui flag" when an improper hideui flag was set. 0.2.4 (4/5/2012): ----------------- - Created new refind.conf entry: "showtools". This entry takes options of "shell", "gptsync", "about", "exit", "reboot", and "shutdown". This option is in some respects an affirmative version of portions of the old "disable" and "hideui" options; however, it enables users to specify the order in which these options appear on the screen. Also, the "exit" option is new; it terminates the program. The effect is usually to return to whatever tool launched it or to launch a default OS; however, this is somewhat unpredictable. The default therefore omits the "exit" option, as well as "gptsync", which has always been dangerous (but necessary on most MacOS/Windows dual-boot setups on Macs). As part of this reconfiguration, I've eliminated the "rescue Linux" option, which always seemed pointless to me. - Folded "disable" and "hideui" refind.conf entries into one ("disable"), and reduced the number of options to six: "banner", "label", "singleuser", "hwtest", "arrows", and "all". ("arrows" is new and disables the scroll arrows when a system has too many tags to display simultaneously.) - Added max_tags option to the refind.conf file, enabling users to reduce the maximum number of OS loader tags that can be displayed at once. - Updated rEFIt icon, based on the 128x128 volume label from the rEFIt CD image. - Added x86 and x86-64 EFI shells to the CD image version of the binary, but NOT to the binary zip file. The logic is that the CD image is more likely to be used directly as an emergency disc and so may need this feature, even though the source isn't part of the rEFInd project. (The source is readily available from the TianoCore project.) - EFI shells may now be stored at /shellx64.efi for x86-64 systems or at /shellia32.efi for x86 systems. The /EFI/tools/shell.efi name is also recognized; however, if both files are present, two EFI shell icons will appear on the main menu. The /efi/{refind-path/apps/shell.efi filename, which was never officially documented but worked as a carryover from rEFIt, is no longer valid. 0.2.3 (3/26/2012): ------------------ - Fixed (maybe) a bug that caused hangs when launching a second program after returning from a first. There are some weird system-to-system differences, though, and this fix causes (apparently harmless) error messages about "(re)opening our installation volume" on at least one system (a 32-bit Mac Mini). I'm committing this change because, imperfect though it is, it's preferable to the earlier version, at least on my small sample of computers. - Because of news that the Linux kernel developers are planning to use the filename linux.conf to hold Linux kernel configuration data for EFI booting, I'm transitioning rEFInd away from that name and to refind_linux.conf to avoid a conflict. This version can use either name, with refind_linux.conf taking precedence if both are present. - Added logo for Arch Linux. 0.2.2 (3/23/2012): ------------------ - Fixed bug that caused program failure when Linux kernels with EFI stub support were detected with no associated version numbers. rEFInd now permits automatic linking of *ONE* versionless kernel to *ONE* versionless initrd file. - Fixed bug that caused program hangs when a boot loader filename or label was too long. Such names are now properly truncated and program execution continues. - Fixed bug that caused no text to appear in submenus on UEFI systems with small screens (800x600). NOTE: Problem still occurs on screens smaller than this, but such systems are very rare. 0.2.1 (3/19/2012): ------------------ - Added ability to set a "default_selection" that's a title or a substring of one -- the name given to a stanza in a "menuentry" or the boot loader's filename, in most cases, although "Mac OS X", "Windows XP (XoM)", and "Microsoft EFI boot" are also titles. - Added support for semi-automatic scans of Linux kernels with EFI stub loader support. The program auto-detects matching initial RAM disk files and loads additional options from the "linux.conf" file in the same directory as the kernel. - Added support for "submenuentry" keyword and associated sub-stanza entries in refind.conf file. - Renamed icons/os_mint.icns to icons/os_linuxmint.icns to match the filename Linux Mint ACTUALLY uses for its ESP boot loader directory. 0.2.0 (3/14/2012): ------------------ - Initial public release