<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
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>
+<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
+10/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.6</p>
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<tr>
<td><tt>showtools</tt></td>
<td><tt>shell</tt>, <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>about</tt>, <tt>exit</tt>, <tt>shutdown</tt>, and <tt>reboot</tt></td>
- <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>about</tt> displays information about the program, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on UEFI PCs), and <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, about, shutdown, reboot</tt>.</td>
+ <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>about</tt> displays information about the program, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on UEFI PCs), and <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, about, shutdown, reboot</tt>. Note that the <tt>shell</tt> and <tt>gptsync</tt> options both require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd; see the <a href="installing.html#addons">"Installing Additional Components"</a> section of the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> page for pointers to these programs.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>textonly</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>scanfor</tt></td>
<td><tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, <tt>optical</tt>, <tt>hdbios</tt>, <tt>biosexternal</tt>, <tt>cd</tt>, and <tt>manual</tt></td>
- <td>Tells rEFInd what methods to use to locate boot loaders. The <tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, and <tt>optical</tt> parameters tell rEFInd to scan for EFI boot loaders on internal, external, and optical (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray) devices, respectively. The <tt>hdbios</tt>, <tt>biosexternal</tt>, and <tt>cd</tt> parameters are similar, but scan for BIOS boot loaders. (Note that the BIOS options are likely to be useless on UEFI PCs.) The <tt>manual</tt> parameter tells rEFInd to scan the configuration file for manual settings. You can specify multiple parameters to have the program scan for multiple boot loader types. When you do so, the order determines the order in which the boot loaders appear in the menu. The default is <tt>internal, external, optical</tt>.</td>
+ <td>Tells rEFInd what methods to use to locate boot loaders. The <tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, and <tt>optical</tt> parameters tell rEFInd to scan for EFI boot loaders on internal, external, and optical (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray) devices, respectively. The <tt>hdbios</tt>, <tt>biosexternal</tt>, and <tt>cd</tt> parameters are similar, but scan for BIOS boot loaders. (Note that the BIOS options scan more thoroughly and actively on Macs than on UEFI-based PCs; for the latter, only options in the firmware's boot list are scanned.) The <tt>manual</tt> parameter tells rEFInd to scan the configuration file for manual settings. You can specify multiple parameters to have the program scan for multiple boot loader types. When you do so, the order determines the order in which the boot loaders appear in the menu. The default is <tt>internal, external, optical, manual</tt> on most systems, but <tt>internal, hdbios, external, biosexternal, optical, cd, manual</tt> on Macs.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td><tt>scan_delay</tt></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>
<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. 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, 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>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>scan_all_linux_kernels</tt></td>