<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 3/18/2013</p>
+<p>Last Web page update: 6/27/2013</p>
<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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<hr />
<ul>
+<li><b>0.7.0 (6/27/2013)</b>—Improvements to the filesystem drivers dominate this version. The biggest change is a new Btrfs driver, created by Samuel Liao and based in part on the GRUB 2.0 Btrfs support. The drivers also now include a read cache to improve their speed. This has only a tiny effect on most computers, but on some it can speed boot times by a few seconds, and under VirtualBox the effect is dramatic—the ext2fs driver goes from a sluggish three <i>minutes</i> to load a kernel and initrd to three <i>seconds</i>. I've also changed some critical filesystem driver pointers from 32-bit to 64-bit, which may enable some of them to work with larger filesystems, although this isn't yet tested. The main rEFInd binary sports only two changes: It can now identify Btrfs volumes as such for labelling purposes and it can now filter out invalid loaders (those for the wrong architecture or Linux kernels that lack EFI stub loader support, for instance).</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.12 (6/18/2013)</b>—This version changes relatively little code, but it adds one feature that will simplify rEFInd installation for some users: The program can now deduce minimal Linux boot options based on an <tt>/etc/fstab</tt> file <i>if</i> that file is on the same partition as the kernel (in other words, if you do <i>not</i> use a separate <tt>/boot</tt> partition). Put another way, <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> is no longer required for some installations, although it's still desirable. If you're already using rEFInd, this isn't likely to be important, but it can help when you're just starting out. In addition, this version adds support for the Linux Foundation's PreBootloader in the <tt>install.sh</tt> script. I've also changed the default 64-bit shell included on the CD-R and USB flash drive images to a modified version 2 shell, so as to enable use of the <tt>bcfg</tt> command to help install rEFInd (or make other changes to the firmware's boot manager configuration).</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.11 (5/13/2013)</b>—Two new features may have a noticeable affect for many users: First, rEFInd now ignores symbolic links on filesystems that support them. I've implemented this change because I've been receiving too many reports from users who want to remove redundant or non-functional Linux boot entries caused by symbolic links created by distributions. Although this is possible by editing the <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt> or <tt>dont_scan_files</tt> options in <tt>refind.conf</tt>, telling users how to do this has become tedious. If you <i>want</i> to use links to create multiple entries for one kernel or boot loader, use hard links instead of symbolic links. The second major user-visible change is that rEFInd now tries to guess the distribution type based on the naming of the kernel file (effective only for Fedora and RHEL) or the contents of the <tt>/etc/os-release</tt> file (effective only if the installation does <i>not</i> have a separate </tt>/boot</tt> partition or if <tt>/etc/os-release</tt> is copied to that location on the partition that holds the kernel). There are several other minor cosmetic issues that some users may notice, including icons for Lubuntu and Kubuntu and a change in the name of the "Reboot to Firmware User Interface" option to "Reboot to Computer Setup Utility." I've also fixed a bug in <tt>gptsync</tt> that could cause it to hang if the disk had too few GPT partitions. Finally, I've improved the <tt>install.sh</tt> script so that it works better from a path with directory names that include spaces.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.10 (5/5/2013)</b>—This version adds a number of minor improvements: The ability to create multiple screen shots under a sequence of names rather than using just one name; a new screen saver feature, activated by the <tt>screensaver</tt> token in <tt>refind.conf</tt>; and an option to reboot the computer into the firmware's setup utility on computers that support this feature. I've also added an OS for ChromeOS (<tt>os_chrome.icns</tt>), and I've updated the LodePNG library to the latest version, which might improve rendering of some PNG files.</li>
+
+<li><b>0.6.9 (4/25/2013)</b>—The most visible change to this version is to the rEFInd banner image, which now includes an icon provided by Erik Kemperman. The biggest change with this version is the inclusion of an updated version of <tt>gptsync</tt>, which is popular on Macs as a means of maintaining the <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html">hybrid MBR</a> that's required to boot Windows in BIOS mode on that platform. Because hybrid MBRs are ugly and dangerous, though, the rEFInd <tt>install.sh</tt> script installs the program only under OS X, and even then it must be activated by uncommending the <tt>scanfor</tt> line in <tt>refind.conf</tt> and adding <tt>gptsync</tt> to its options list. If you want to use <tt>gptsync</tt> on a PC, you can, but you'll need to copy the program file manually to the ESP's <tt>EFI/tools</tt> directory. Other changes with this version include working around a suspected firmware bug that can cause hangs when rEFInd starts on some systems and changing the timeout code so that rEFInd will launch its default OS even if the computer is started without a keyboard.</li>
+
<li><b>0.6.8 (3/18/2013)</b>—This version fixes a few obscure bugs but adds only one minor new feature. Most notably, it fixes a problem that caused "Invalid Parameter" errors to appear when scanning for boot loaders on some systems; fixes a bug that caused icons defined in files named after boot loaders to not appear; and fixes a bug in the <tt>install.sh</tt> script that caused the script to fail on some systems. It also enables you to name a shell <tt>shell.efi</tt> in the root directory (previously only <tt>shell_<i>arch</i>.efi</tt> worked in the root directory, although <tt>shell.efi</tt> worked in the <tt>EFI/tools</tt> directory).</li>
<li><b>0.6.7 (2/3/2013)</b>—This version fixes a few bugs and adds some minor features relating to Secure Boot. Bug fixes include keeping rEFInd out of its own menu when it's launched as <tt>EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi</tt>; keeping the <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> option out of the <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt> list; a fix for <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> so that it applies to the OS X boot loader; and a fix for a bug that caused PNG files in a user-specified icons directory to be ignored if an ICNS file was available in the standard icons directory. New features include support for the Linux Foundation's <tt>HashTool.efi</tt> as a MOK utility, scanning for MOK utilities on all volumes, and a more verbose error message when a Secure Boot authentication failure occurs.</li>