href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-6/3/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.2</p>
+11/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.7</p>
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<ul>
+ <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
+ icons.</li>
+
<li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
"About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>
+ <li>Various options (<tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>, <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt>,
+ <tt>scan_driver_dirs</tt>, etc.) refer to directories or files,
+ either on the ESP or on all partitions. A way to identify specific
+ partitions for these options would be useful in some
+ situations.</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->
<li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>
<ul>
- <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
- UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
- Macs—or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
- UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
- work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, <a
- href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
- thoughts.)</li>
-
<li>The <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Gigabyte
Hybrid EFI</a> has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
<tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
<li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
- similar problems.</p>
+ similar problems.</li>
</ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
<ul>
+ <li>With the arrival of PCs preloaded with Windows 8 and with Secure
+ Boot enabled, some way to cope is in order. I'm thinking of adding
+ code to limit or prohibit booting of unsigned boot loaders if
+ rEFInd detects that Secure Boot is active, and link with the <a
+ href="http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/18945.html">Shim</a>
+ pre-bootloader to help handle signing and authentication. I need to
+ research the technical details more, though.</li>
+
<li>EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
it would.</li>
forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
<li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
- boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt>
- file.</li>
+ boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
+ One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
+ stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
+ boot loader file.</li>
<li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
can be used on any of the major OSes.</li>
+ <li>A way to "source" one configuration file from another one would be
+ helpful for some types of configuration scripts. (This would enable
+ overriding options in a secondary file without modifying the
+ default original file, for instance.)</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- New features -->
<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
<ul>
- <li>The 32-bit versions of the drivers return filesystem labels that
- omit the first two characters of the name. If the name is shorter
- than two characters, the driver may return the wrong volume's
- label. The 64-bit builds seem to be unaffected by this bug.</li>
-
<li>Drivers for additional filesystems are required. Given the recent
shift to ext4fs, that should be the priority; however, other Linux
filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
<li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
what the volume's real label is.</li>
+ <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
+ to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
+ desirable.</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
</ul>