href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-12/11/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.5.1</p>
+1/16/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.5</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>
<hr />
-<p>Many casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making changes to its settings; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. On Macs, rEFInd also presents legacy BIOS boot options by default. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, <tt>refind.conf</tt>, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (<tt>refind.efi</tt> or whatever you've renamed it).</p>
+<div style="float:right; width:55%">
+
+<p>Many casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making changes to its settings; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. On Macs, rEFInd also presents legacy BIOS boot options by default. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, <tt>refind.conf</tt>, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (<tt>refind_x64.efi</tt> or whatever you've renamed it).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="navbar">
+
+<h4 class="tight">Contents</h4>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li class="tight"><a href="#hiding">Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders</li>
+
+<li class="tight"><a href="#adjusting">Adjusting the Global Configuration</a></li>
+
+<li class="tight"><a href="#stanzas">Creating OS Stanzas</a></li>
+
+<li class="tight"><a href="#submenu">Creating Submenu Entries</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+</div>
<p>Broadly speaking, rEFInd's configuration file is broken down into two sections: <i>global options</i> and <i>OS stanzas.</i> The global options section sets options that apply globally—to set the timeout period, enable graphics or text mode, and so on. OS stanzas are optional, but if present, they enable you to add new boot options or replace the auto-detected options with customized ones. Both sections include configuration lines and comment lines, the latter being denoted by a leading hash mark (<tt>#</tt>). rEFInd ignores comment lines, so you can add explanatory text. The default configuration file includes numerous comments explaining each of the options.</p>
+<a name="hiding">
<h2>Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders</h2>
+</a>
<p class="sidebar">ESPs use the FAT filesystem, which is case-insensitive. Unfortunately, at least one EFI implementation (Gigabyte's <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gb-hybrid-efi/">Hybrid EFI</a>) contains a bug that causes string comparisons that should be case-insensitive to actually be done in a case-sensitive way. This can cause files that are present to appear to be missing. rEFInd includes code to work around this bug in some situations, but not in all of them. If boot loaders appear to be missing, try changing the case on their filenames or on the <tt>EFI</tt> directory in the ESP. (It's coded as uppercase in rEFInd; but EFI loader filename extensions are coded as lowercase <tt>.efi</tt>. I made these choices because they seem to be the most common uses on real-world installations.)</p>
<p>Another way to hide a boot loader is to move it into rEFInd's own directory. In order to keep rEFInd from showing up in its own menu, it ignores boot loaders in its own directory. This obviously includes the rEFInd binary file itself, but also anything else you might store there.</p>
-<p>In addition to hiding boot loaders, you can adjust their icons. You can do this in any of three ways for auto-detected boot loaders:</p>
+<p>In addition to hiding boot loaders, you can adjust their icons. You can do this in any of five ways for auto-detected boot loaders:</p>
<ul>
-<li>You can place a boot loader in a directory with a name that matches one of rEFInd's standard icons, which take names of the form <tt>os_<tt class="variable">name</tt>.icns</tt>. To use this icon, you would place the boot loader in the directory called <tt class="variable">name</tt>.</li>
+<li>You can name an icon file after your boot loader, but with an extension of <tt>.icns</tt> or <tt>.png</tt> for ICNS-format and PNG-format icons, respectively. For instance, if you're using <tt class="variable">loader</tt><tt>.efi</tt>, you would name the icon file <tt class="variable">loader</tt><tt>.icns</tt>. (If you use the <tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt> option, you can give an icon for a Linux kernel without a <tt>.efi</tt> extension a name based on the kernel name but with a <tt>.icns</tt> or <tt>.png</tt> extension—for instance, <tt>bzImage-3.6.9.png</tt> will serve as the icon for the <tt>bzImage-3.6.9</tt> kernel.) These icon files should be 128x128 images in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Icon_Image_format">Apple's ICNS</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics">Portable Network Graphics (PNG)</a> format, depending on the filename extension.</li>
-<li>You can name an icon file after your boot loader, but with an extension of <tt>.icns</tt>. For instance, if you're using <tt class="variable">loader</tt><tt>.efi</tt>, you would name the icon file <tt class="variable">loader</tt><tt>.icns</tt>. (If you use the <tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt> option, you can give an icon for a Linux kernel without a <tt>.efi</tt> extension a name based on the kernel name but with a <tt>.icns</tt> extension—for instance, <tt>bzImage-3.3.2.icns</tt> will serve as the icon for the <tt>bzImage-3.3.2</tt> kernel.) These icon files should be 128x128 images in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Icon_Image_format">Apple's ICNS format.</a> You can create such files easily in OS X or convert PNG files to ICNS format with <a href="http://icns.sourceforge.net/">libicns.</a></li>
+<li>If you're booting OS X from its standard boot loader, or if you place a boot loader file for any OS in the root directory of a partition, you can create a file called <tt>.VolumeIcon.icns</tt> or <tt>.VolumeIcon.png</tt> that holds an icon file. OS X uses the <tt>.VolumeIcon.icns</tt> file for its volume icons, so rEFInd picks up these icons automatically, provided they include 128x128 bitmaps.</li>
-<li>If you're booting OS X from its standard boot loader, or if you place a boot loader file in the root directory of a partition, you can create a file called <tt>.VolumeIcon.icns</tt> that holds an icon file. OS X uses this file for its volume icons, so rEFInd picks up these icons automatically, provided they include 128x128 bitmaps.</li>
+<li>You can place a boot loader in a directory with a name that matches one of rEFInd's standard icons, which take names of the form <tt>os_<tt class="variable">name</tt>.icns</tt> or <tt>os_<tt class="variable">name</tt>.png</tt>. To use such an icon, you would place the boot loader in the directory called <tt class="variable">name</tt>.</li>
+
+<li>You can give the filesystem from which the boot loader is loaded a name that matches the OS name component of the icon filename. For instance, if you call your boot filesystem <tt>CentOS</tt>, it matches the <tt>os_centos.icns</tt> icon. This match is performed on a word-by-word basis within the name, with "words" being delimited by spaces, dashes (<tt>-</tt>), and underscores (<tt>_</tt>). Thus, a volume called <tt>Debian-boot</tt> will match <tt>os_debian.icns</tt> or <tt>os_boot.icns</tt>.</li>
+
+<li>Certain boot loaders have hard-coded icons associated with them. For instance, filenames beginning with <tt>vmlinuz</tt> or <tt>bzImage</tt> acquire Linux "Tux" icons and the <tt>bootmgfw.efi</tt> loader acquires a Windows icon. For the most part, these are the associations you want to overcome with the preceding rules, but sometimes renaming a boot loader to a more conventional name is the better approach.</li>
</ul>
-<p>As a special case, rEFInd assigns icons to the Windows and OS X boot loaders based on their conventional locations, so they get suitable icons even though they don't follow these rules.</p>
+<p>As a special case, rEFInd assigns icons to the Windows and OS X boot loaders based on their conventional locations, so they get suitable icons even if they don't follow these rules.</p>
-<p>In addition to the main OS tag icon, you can set the <i>badge</i> icon for a volume by creating a file called <tt>.VolumeBadge.icns</tt> in the root directory of a partition. This icon file must include a 32x32 bitmap. If present, it replaces the disk-type icons that are overlaid on the main OS icon. If you use this feature, the badge is applied to all the boot loaders read from the disk, not just those stored in the root directory or the Apple boot loader location. You could use this feature to set a custom badge for different specific disks or to help differentiate multiple OS X installations on one computer.</p>
+<p>In addition to the main OS tag icon, you can set the <i>badge</i> icon for a volume by creating a file called <tt>.VolumeBadge.icns</tt> or <tt>.VolumeBadge.png</tt> in the root directory of a partition. This icon file must include a 32x32 bitmap. If present, it replaces the disk-type icons that are overlaid on the main OS icon. If you use this feature, the badge is applied to all the boot loaders read from the disk, not just those stored in the root directory or the Apple boot loader location. You could use this feature to set a custom badge for different specific disks or to help differentiate multiple OS X installations on one computer. If you don't want any badges, you can replace the three badge icons in the rEFInd <tt>icons</tt> subdirectory (<tt>vol_external.icns</tt>, <tt>vol_internal.icns</tt>, and <tt>vol_optical.icns</tt>) with a completely transparent badge. The <tt>transparent.icns</tt> file in the rEFInd <tt>icons</tt> directory may be used for this purpose.</p>
+<a name="adjusting">
<h2>Adjusting the Global Configuration</h2>
+</a>
<p>You can adjust many of rEFInd's options by editing its <tt>refind.conf</tt> file. You can use any text editor you like for the job, but be sure it saves the file in plain ASCII text, not in a word processing format. (In theory, a UTF-16 encoding should also work, but I've not tried that myself.) Note that the EFI shell includes its own editor. If you need to make a change before you launch an OS, you can launch a shell, change to the rEFInd directory, and type <b><tt>edit refind.conf</tt></b> to edit the file. This EFI editor is quite primitive, but it gets the job done. After editing, you'll need to reboot for rEFInd to read the changed configuration file.</p>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>hideui</tt></td>
- <td><tt>banner</tt>, <tt>label</tt>, <tt>singleuser</tt>, <tt>hwtest</tt>, <tt>arrows</tt>, or <tt>all</tt></td>
- <td>Removes the specified user interface features. <tt>banner</tt> removes the banner graphic, <tt>label</tt> removes the text description of each tag and the countdown timer, <tt>singleuser</tt> removes the single-user option from the Mac OS sub-menu, <tt>hwtest</tt> removes the Mac OS hardware test option, <tt>arrows</tt> removes the arrows to the right or left of the OS tags when rEFInd finds too many OSes to display simultaneously, and <tt>all</tt> removes all of these options. You can specify multiple parameters with this option. The default is to set none of these values.</td>
+ <td><tt>banner</tt>, <tt>label</tt>, <tt>singleuser</tt>, <tt>safemode</tt>, <tt>hwtest</tt>, <tt>arrows</tt>, <tt>hints</tt>, <tt>editor</tt>, or <tt>all</tt></td>
+ <td>Removes the specified user interface features. <tt>banner</tt> removes the banner graphic, <tt>label</tt> removes the text description of each tag and the countdown timer, <tt>singleuser</tt> removes the single-user option from the OS X sub-menu, <tt>safemode</tt> removes the option to boot to safe mode from the OS X sub-menu, <tt>hwtest</tt> removes the Macintosh hardware test option, <tt>arrows</tt> removes the arrows to the right or left of the OS tags when rEFInd finds too many OSes to display simultaneously, <tt>hints</tt> removes the brief description of what basic keypresses do, <tt>editor</tt> disables the options editor, and <tt>all</tt> removes all of these options. You can specify multiple parameters with this option. The default is to set none of these values.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>icons_dir</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>banner</tt></td>
<td>filename</td>
- <td>Specifies a custom banner file to replaced the rEFInd banner image. The file should be a BMP image with a color depth of 24, 8, 4, or 1 bits. The file path is relative to the directory where <tt>refind.efi</tt> is stored.</td>
+ <td>Specifies a custom banner file to replace the rEFInd banner image. The file should be a BMP or PNG image with a color depth of 24, 8, 4, or 1 bits. The file path is relative to the directory where the rEFInd binary is stored.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>selection_big</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>textonly</tt></td>
- <td>None or <tt>0</tt></td>
+ <td>none or <tt>0</tt></td>
<td>rEFInd defaults to a graphical mode; however, if you prefer to do without the flashy graphics, you can run it in text mode by including this option. Passing any option but <tt>0</tt> causes text mode to be used; passing a <tt>0</tt> causes graphics mode to be used. (This could be useful if you want to override a text-mode setting in an included secondary configuration file.)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>textmode</tt></td>
<td>text mode number</td>
- <td>Sets the text-mode video resolution to be used in conjunction with <tt>textonly</tt> or for the line editor and program-launch screens. This option takes a single-digit code. Mode <tt>0</tt> is guaranteed to be present and should be 80x25. Mode <tt>1</tt> is supposed to be either invalid or 80x50, but some systems use this number for something else. Higher values are system-specific. If you set this option to an invalid value, rEFInd pauses during startup to tell you of that fact. Note that on some computers, setting this value without also using <tt>textonly</tt> results in an incorrect graphics video mode being set. Pressing the Esc key corrects the problem.</td>
+ <td>Sets the text-mode video resolution to be used in conjunction with <tt>textonly</tt> or for the line editor and program-launch screens. This option takes a single-digit code. Mode <tt>0</tt> is guaranteed to be present and should be 80x25. Mode <tt>1</tt> is supposed to be either invalid or 80x50, but some systems use this number for something else. Higher values are system-specific. Mode <tt>1024</tt> is a rEFInd-specific code that means to <i>not</i> set any mode at all; rEFInd instead uses whatever mode was set when it launched. If you set this option to an invalid value, rEFInd pauses during startup to tell you of that fact. Note that setting <tt>textmode</tt> can sometimes force your graphics-mode resolution to a higher value than you specify in <tt>resolution</tt>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>resolution</tt></td>
<td>one or two integer values</td>
- <td>Sets the video resolution used by rEFInd; takes <i>either</i> a width and a height <i>or</i> a single UEFI video mode number as options. For instance, <tt>resolution 1024 768</tt> sets the resolution to 1024x768. On UEFI systems, <tt>resolution 1</tt> sets video mode 1, the resolution of which varies from system to system. If you set a resolution that doesn't work on a UEFI-based system, rEFInd displays a message along with a list of valid modes. On an system built around EFI 1.<i>x</i> (such as a Mac), setting an incorrect resolution fails silently; you'll get the system's default resolution. You'll also get the system's default resolution if you set both resolution values to <tt>0</tt> or if you pass anything but two numbers. (Note that passing a resolution with an <tt>x</tt>, as in <tt>1024x768</tt>, will be interpreted as <i>one</i> option and so will cause the default resolution to be used.) Also, be aware that it is possible to set a valid resolution for your video card that's invalid for your monitor. If you do this, your monitor will go blank until you've booted an OS that resets the video mode.</td>
+ <td>Sets the video resolution used by rEFInd; takes <i>either</i> a width and a height <i>or</i> a single UEFI video mode number as options. For instance, <tt>resolution 1024 768</tt> sets the resolution to 1024x768. On UEFI systems, <tt>resolution 1</tt> sets video mode 1, the resolution of which varies from system to system. If you set a resolution that doesn't work on a UEFI-based system, rEFInd displays a message along with a list of valid modes. On an system built around EFI 1.<i>x</i> (such as a Mac), setting an incorrect resolution fails silently; you'll get the system's default resolution. You'll also get the system's default resolution if you set both resolution values to <tt>0</tt> or if you pass anything but two numbers. (Note that passing a resolution with an <tt>x</tt>, as in <tt>1024x768</tt>, will be interpreted as <i>one</i> option and so will cause the default resolution to be used.) If you get a higher resolution than you request, try commenting out or changing the <tt>textmode</tt> value, since it can force the system to use a higher graphics resolution than you specify with <tt>resolution</tt>. Also, be aware that it is possible to set a valid resolution for your video card that's invalid for your monitor. If you do this, your monitor will go blank until you've booted an OS that resets the video mode.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>use_graphics_for</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>scan_delay</tt></td>
- <td>Numeric (integer) value</td>
+ <td>numeric (integer) value</td>
<td>Imposes a delay before rEFInd scans for disk devices. Ordinarily this is not necessary, but on some systems, some disks (particularly external drives and optical discs) can take a few seconds to become available. If some of your disks don't appear when rEFInd starts but they <i>do</i> appear when you press the Esc key to re-scan, try uncommenting this option and setting it to a modest value, such as <tt>2</tt>, <tt>5</tt>, or even <tt>10</tt>. The default is <tt>0</tt>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>also_scan_dirs</tt></td>
<td>directory path(s)</td>
- <td>Adds the specified directory or directories to the directory list that rEFInd scans for EFI boot loaders when <tt>scanfor</tt> includes the <tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, or <tt>optical</tt> options. Directories are specified relative to the filesystem's root directory. If this option is used, it's applied to <i>all</i> the filesystems that rEFInd scans. If a specified directory doesn't exist, rEFInd ignores it (no error results).</td>
+ <td>Adds the specified directory or directories to the directory list that rEFInd scans for EFI boot loaders when <tt>scanfor</tt> includes the <tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, or <tt>optical</tt> options. Directories are specified relative to the filesystem's root directory. You may precede a directory path with a volume name and colon, as in <tt>somevol:/extra/path</tt>, to restrict the extra scan to a single volume. A volume number, preceded by <tt>fs</tt>, can be used for volumes that lack names, as in <tt>fs1:/extra/path</tt>. If you don't specify a volume name or number, this option is applied to <i>all</i> the filesystems that rEFInd scans. If a specified directory doesn't exist, rEFInd ignores it (no error results). The default value is <tt>boot</tt>, which is useful for locating Linux kernels when you have an EFI driver for your Linux root (<tt>/</tt>) filesystem.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td><tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_volumes</tt></td>
+ <td>filesystem label(s)</td>
+ <td>Adds the specified volume or volumes to a volume "blacklist"—these filesystems are <i>not</i> scanned for EFI boot loaders. This may be useful to keep unwanted EFI boot entries, such as for a Macintosh recovery partition, from appearing on the main list of boot loaders.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_dirs</tt></td>
<td>directory path(s)</td>
- <td>Adds the specified directory or directories to a directory "blacklist"—these directories are <i>not</i> scanned for boot loaders, on <i>any</i> partition. This may be useful to keep duplicate boot loaders out of the menu (say, if <tt>EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi</tt> is a duplicate of another boot loader); or to keep drivers or utilities out of the boot menu, if you've stored them in a subdirectory of <tt>EFI</tt>. This option takes precedence over <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt>; if a directory appears in both lists, it will <i>not</i> be scanned.</td>
+ <td>Adds the specified directory or directories to a directory "blacklist"—these directories are <i>not</i> scanned for boot loaders. You may optionally precede a directory path with a volume name and a colon to limit the blacklist to that volume; otherwise all volumes are affected. For instance, <tt>EFI/BOOT</tt> prevents scanning the <tt>EFI/BOOT</tt> directory on <i>all</i> volumes, whereas <tt>ESP:EFI/BOOT</tt> blocks scans of <tt>EFI/BOOT</tt> on the volume called <tt>ESP</tt> but not on other volumes. You can use a filesystem number, as in <tt>fs0</tt>, in place of a volume name. This token may be useful to keep duplicate boot loaders out of the menu (say, if <tt>EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi</tt> is a duplicate of another boot loader); or to keep drivers or utilities out of the boot menu, if you've stored them in a subdirectory of <tt>EFI</tt>. This option takes precedence over <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt>; if a directory appears in both lists, it will <i>not</i> be scanned.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_files</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_files</tt></td>
- <td>Filename(s)</td>
+ <td>filename(s)</td>
<td>Adds the specified filename or filenames to a filename "blacklist"—these files are <i>not</i> included as boot loader options even if they're found on the disk. This is useful to exclude support programs (such as <tt>shim.efi</tt> and <tt>MokManager.efi</tt>) and drivers from your OS list. The default value is <tt>shim.efi, MokManager.efi, TextMode.efi, ebounce.efi, GraphicsConsole.efi</tt>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt></td>
- <td>None or <tt>0</tt></td>
+ <td>none or <tt>0</tt></td>
<td>When set, causes rEFInd to add Linux kernels (files with names that begin with <tt>vmlinuz</tt> or <tt>bzImage</tt>) to the list of EFI boot loaders, even if they lack <tt>.efi</tt> filename extensions. The hope is that this will simplify use of rEFInd on distributions that provide kernels with EFI stub loader support but that don't give those kernels names that end in <tt>.efi</tt>. Of course, the kernels must still be stored on a filesystem that rEFInd can read, and in a directory that it scans. (<a href="drivers.html">Drivers</a> and the <tt>also_scan_dirs</tt> options can help with those issues.) Note that this option can cause unwanted files to be improperly detected and given loader tags, such as older kernels without EFI stub loader support. Versions of rEFInd prior to 0.5.0 left this option commented out in the <tt>refind.conf-sample</tt> file, but as of version 0.5.0, this option is enabled in the default configuration file. The program default remains to not scan for such kernels, though, so you can delete or uncomment this option to keep them from appearing in your boot menu. Passing any option but <tt>0</tt> causes scans for all kernels to occur; passing a <tt>0</tt> causes these kernels to not be scanned. (This could be useful if you want to override a setting of <tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt> in an included secondary configuration file.)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>default_selection</tt></td>
- <td>A substring of a boot loader's title; or a numeric position</td>
+ <td>a substring of a boot loader's title; or a numeric position</td>
<td>Sets the default boot OS based on the loader's title, which appears in the main menu beneath the icons when you select the loader. You can enter any substring of the title as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, so long as it's two or more characters in length. It's best to use a unique substring, since rEFInd stops searching when it finds the first match. Because rEFInd sorts entries within a directory in descending order by file modification time, if you specify a directory (or volume name, for loaders in a partition's root directory) as the <tt>default_selection</tt>, the most recent loader in that directory will be the default. One-character entries are matched against the first character of the title, except for digits, which refer to the numeric order of the boot loader entries.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
default_selection elilo
</pre>
-<p>This example sets a timeout of 5 seconds; loads a custom graphic file called <tt>custom.bmp</tt> from the directory in which <tt>refind.efi</tt> resides; scans the <tt>drivers</tt> and <tt>EFI/tools/drivers</tt> directories for EFI drivers; uses manual boot loader configuration but also scans for external EFI boot loaders and EFI boot loaders on optical discs; and sets the default boot loader to the first loader found that includes the string <tt>elilo</tt>. Of course, since this file specifies use of manual boot loader configuration, it's not complete; you'll need to add at least one OS stanza to be able to boot from anything but an external disk or optical drive, as described shortly.</p>
+<p>This example sets a timeout of 5 seconds; loads a custom graphic file called <tt>custom.bmp</tt> from the directory in which the rEFInd binary resides; scans the <tt>drivers</tt> and <tt>EFI/tools/drivers</tt> directories for EFI drivers; uses manual boot loader configuration but also scans for external EFI boot loaders and EFI boot loaders on optical discs; and sets the default boot loader to the first loader found that includes the string <tt>elilo</tt>. Of course, since this file specifies use of manual boot loader configuration, it's not complete; you'll need to add at least one OS stanza to be able to boot from anything but an external disk or optical drive, as described shortly.</p>
+<a name="stanzas">
<h2>Creating OS Stanzas</h2>
+</a>
<p>OS stanzas in rEFInd are similar to those in GRUB Legacy, GRUB 2, or ELILO. You can use them to add configuration options to those that are auto-detected. You cannot modify the auto-detected options, though; if you just want to tweak one OS's configuration, you have several options, none of which is ideal:</p>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>disabled</tt></td>
- <td>None</td>
+ <td>none</td>
<td>Disable an entry. This is often easier than commenting out an entire entry if you want to temporarily disable it.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<pre class="listing">mm 0003003E 8 -pci
fs0:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi</pre>
-<p>This example writes data to the computer's PCI bus via the EFI shell's <tt>mm</tt> command and then launches Windows. Chances are you won't need to engage in such operations, and I do <i>not</i> recommend you try this exact example unless you know what you're doing! This command was required to activate the video hardware on a computer of a person with whom I corresponded prior to booting Windows, but such needs are rare.</p>
+<p>This example writes data to the computer's PCI bus via the EFI shell's <tt>mm</tt> command and then launches Windows. Chances are you won't need to engage in such operations, and I do <i>not</i> recommend you try this exact example unless you know what you're doing! This command was required to activate the video hardware on a computer of a person with whom I corresponded prior to booting Windows, but such needs are rare. Another example of a similar approach can be found in <a href="http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/printfriendly2367.htm">this forum thread.</a> A few pointers on finding addresses for your hardware can be found <a href="http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2367-macbook-pro-retina-15-gtx-560-ti-%40-th05-8.html#post36199">in this post.</a></p>
<p>You can combine these OS stanzas with the global <tt>refind.conf</tt> options presented earlier. The result would contain just two entries on the rEFInd boot menu (for Gentoo and Windows, since the Ubuntu entry is disabled), unless rEFInd found other boot options on an external or optical disk.</p>
+<a name="submenu">
<h2>Creating Submenu Entries</h2>
+</a>
<p>As described on the <a href="using.html">Using rEFInd</a> page, rEFInd can present a menu of options for certain loader tags when you press the Insert, F2, or + key. rEFInd does this automatically when it detects Mac OS X or ELILO boot loaders, or when you set the OS type via the <tt>ostype</tt> option. The Mac OS X boot loader, in particular, accepts various options that you can use to boot in various ways.</p>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>disabled</tt></td>
- <td>None</td>
+ <td>none</td>
<td>Disable a submenu entry. This is often easier than commenting out an entire entry if you want to temporarily disable it.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr />
-<p>copyright © 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
+<p>copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
<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>