href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-5/15/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.8.1</p>
+12/8/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.8.4</p>
<p>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>
<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>
+<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 EFI System Partition (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>
<tr>
<td><tt>timeout</tt></td>
<td>numeric value</td>
- <td>Sets the timeout period in seconds. If <tt>0</tt>, the timeout is disabled—rEFInd waits indefinitely for user input.</td>
+ <td>Sets the timeout period in seconds. If <tt>0</tt>, the timeout is disabled—rEFInd waits indefinitely for user input. If <tt>-1</tt>, rEFInd will normally boot immediately to the default selection; however, if a shortcut key (for instance, <tt>W</tt> for Windows) is pressed, that system will boot instead. If any other key is pressed, the menu will show with no timeout.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>screensaver</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>icons_dir</tt></td>
<td>directory name</td>
- <td>Specifies a directory in which custom icons may be found. This directory should contain files with the same names as the files in the standard <tt>icons</tt> directory. The directory name is specified relative to the directory in which the rEFInd binary resides. The standard <tt>icons</tt> directory is searched if an icon can't be found in the one specified by <tt>icons_dir</tt>, so you can use this location to redefine just some icons.</td>
+ <td>Specifies a directory in which custom icons may be found. This directory should contain files with the same names as the files in the standard <tt>icons</tt> directory. The directory name is specified relative to the directory in which the rEFInd binary resides. The standard <tt>icons</tt> directory is searched if an icon can't be found in the one specified by <tt>icons_dir</tt>, so you can use this location to redefine just some icons. Note that if no icons directory is found (either <tt>icons</tt> or one specified by <tt>icons_dir</tt>), rEFInd switches to text-only mode, as if <tt>textonly</tt> had been specified.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>banner</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>showtools</tt></td>
- <td><tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>gdisk</tt>, <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, <tt>mok_tool</tt>, <tt>about</tt>, <tt>exit</tt>, <tt>shutdown</tt>, <tt>reboot</tt>, and <tt>firmware</tt></td>
- <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>memtest</tt> (or <tt>memtest86</tt>) launches the <a href="http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm">Memtest86</a> program, <tt>gdisk</tt> launches the partitioning tool of the same name, <tt>gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>apple_recovery</tt> boots the OS X Recovery HD, <tt>windows_recovery</tt> boots a Windows recovery tool, <tt>mok_tool</tt> launches a tool to manage Machine Owner Keys (MOKs) on systems with Secure Boot active, <tt>
about</tt> displays information about the program, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on some UEFI PCs), <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer, and <tt>firmware</tt> reboots the computer into the computer's own setup utility. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, memtest, gdisk, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, shutdown, reboot, firmware</tt>. Note that the <tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, and <tt>mok_tool</tt> options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd. The <tt>gptsync</tt> option requires use of a like-named program which, although it ships with rEFInd 0.6.9 and later, is not installed by default except under OS X. 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 the shell, Memtest86, and <tt>gptsync</tt> programs. The <tt>apple_recovery</tt> option will appear only if you've got an Apple Recovery HD partition (which has a boot loader called <tt>com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi</tt>). The <tt>firmware</tt> option works only on computers that support this option; on other computers, the option is quietly ignored. See the <a href="secureboot.html">Secure Boot</a> page for information on Secure Boot and MOK management.</td>
+ <td><tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>gdisk</tt>, <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, <tt>mok_tool</tt>, <tt>netboot</tt>, <tt>about</tt>, <tt>exit</tt>, <tt>shutdown</tt>, <tt>reboot</tt>, and <tt>firmware</tt></td>
+ <td>Specifies which tool tags to display on the second row. <tt>shell</tt> launches an EFI shell, <tt>memtest</tt> (or <tt>memtest86</tt>) launches the <a href="http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm">Memtest86</a> program, <tt>gdisk</tt> launches the partitioning tool of the same name, <tt>gptsync</tt> launches a tool that creates a hybrid MBR, <tt>apple_recovery</tt> boots the OS X Recovery HD, <tt>windows_recovery</tt> boots a Windows recovery tool, <tt>mok_tool</tt> launches a tool to manage Machine Owner Keys (MOKs) on systems with Secure Boot active, <tt>
netboot</tt> launches the network boot tool (iPXE), <tt>about</tt> displays information about rEFInd, <tt>exit</tt> terminates rEFInd, <tt>shutdown</tt> shuts down the computer (or reboots it, on some UEFI PCs), <tt>reboot</tt> reboots the computer, and <tt>firmware</tt> reboots the computer into the computer's own setup utility. The tags appear in the order in which you specify them. The default is <tt>shell, memtest, gdisk, apple_recovery, mok_tool, about, shutdown, reboot, firmware</tt>. Note that the <tt>shell</tt>, <tt>memtest</tt>, <tt>apple_recovery</tt>, and <tt>mok_tool</tt> options all require the presence of programs not included with rEFInd. The <tt>gptsync</tt> option requires use of a like-named program which, although it ships with rEFInd 0.6.9 and later, is not installed by default except under OS X. 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 the shell, Memtest86, and <tt>gptsync</tt> programs. The <tt>apple_recovery</tt> option will appear only if you've got an Apple Recovery HD partition (which has a boot loader called <tt>com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi</tt>). The <tt>firmware</tt> option works only on computers that support this option; on other computers, the option is quietly ignored. See the <a href="secureboot.html">Secure Boot</a> page for information on Secure Boot and MOK management.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>font</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>textonly</tt></td>
<td>none or one of <tt>true</tt>, <tt>on</tt>, <tt>1</tt>, <tt>false</tt>, <tt>off</tt>, 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 (alone or with <tt>true</tt>, <tt>on</tt>, or <tt>1</tt>). Passing <tt>false</tt>, <tt>off</tt>, or <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>
+ <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 (alone or with <tt>true</tt>, <tt>on</tt>, or <tt>1</tt>). Passing <tt>false</tt>, <tt>off</tt>, or <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.) Text-only mode is implicitly set if rEFInd cannot find either a subdirectory called <tt>icons</tt> or a subdirectory named by <tt>icons_dir</tt>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>textmode</tt></td>
</tr>
<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 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, as described on the <a href="using.html">Using rEFInd</a> page.) 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>
+ <td><tt>internal</tt>, <tt>external</tt>, <tt>optical</tt>, <tt>netboot</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>
netboot</tt> option relies on the presence of the <tt>ipxe.efi</tt> and <tt>ipxe_discover.efi</tt> program files in the <tt>EFI/tools</tt> directory to assist with network (Preboot Execution Environment, or PXE) booting. Note that <tt>netboot</tt> is experimental. See the <tt>BUILDING.txt</tt> file for information on building the necessary binaries. 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, as described on the <a href="using.html">Using rEFInd</a> page.) 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>uefi_deep_legacy_scan</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_volumes</tt></td>
<td>filesystem or partition 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. The default value is <tt>"Recovery HD", LRS_ESP</tt>, to keep the Mac OS X and Lenovo Windows recovery volumes from appearing. (These should get their own tools icon instead—see the <tt>showtools</tt> token.) Note that on a Macintosh with whole-disk encryption, you may need to uncomment this token and leave <tt>"Recovery HD"</tt> <i>off</i> the list to boot the system. You can use <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> to hide disks or partitions from legacy-mode scans, too. In this case, you can enter any part of the description that appears beneath the icons to hide entries that include the string you specify.</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. The default value is <tt>LRS_ESP</tt>, to keep the Lenovo Windows recovery volume from appearing. (This volume should get its own tools icon instead—see the <tt>showtools</tt> token.) You can use <tt>dont_scan_volumes</tt> to hide disks or partitions from legacy-mode scans, too. In this case, you can enter any part of the description that appears beneath the icons to hide entries that include the string you specify.</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. 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; 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. To add directories to the default list rather than replace the list, specify <tt>+</tt> as the first option, as in <tt>dont_scan_dirs + EFI/dontscan</tt>.</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; 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. To add directories to the default list rather than replace the list, specify <tt>+</tt> as the first option, as in <tt>dont_scan_dirs + EFI/dontscan</tt>. The default for this token is <tt>EFI/tools, EFI/tools/memtest86, EFI/tools/memtest, EFI/memtest86, EFI/memtest, com.apple.recovery.boot</tt>.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>dont_scan_files</tt> or <tt>don't_scan_files</tt></td>
<tr>
<td><tt>default_selection</tt></td>
<td>a substring of a boot loader's title, or a numeric position; optionally followed by two times in <tt class="variable">HH:MM</tt> format</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. If you specify a comma-delimited list of names <i><b>in quotation marks,</b></i> rEFInd will search on these in turn until it finds a match. For instance, <tt>default_selection "alpha,beta"</tt> will launch <tt>alpha</tt> if it's available, and <tt>beta</tt> if <tt>alpha</tt> is not available but <tt>beta</tt> is. You may optionally follow the match string by two times, in 24-hour format, in which case the entry applies only between those two times. For instance, <tt>default_selection Safety 1:30 2:30</tt> boots the entry called <tt>Safety</tt> by default between the hours of 1:30 and 2:30. These times are specified in whatever format the motherboard clock uses (local time or UTC). If the first value is larger than the second, as in <tt>23:00 1:00</tt>, it is interpreted as crossing midnight—11:00 PM to 1:00 AM in this example. The last <tt>default_selection</tt> setting takes precedence over preceding ones <i>if</i> the time value matches. Thus, you can set a main <tt>default_selection</tt> without a time specification and then set one or more others to override the main setting at specific times.</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 newest 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. If you specify a comma-delimited list of names <i><b>in quotation marks,</b></i> rEFInd will search on these in turn until it finds a match. For instance, <tt>default_selection "alpha,beta"</tt> will launch <tt>alpha</tt> if it's available, and <tt>beta</tt> if <tt>alpha</tt> is not available but <tt>beta</tt> is. If the <i>first</i> item in such a list is a plus sign (<tt>+</tt>), that refers to the item that rEFInd launched the last time it ran. You may optionally follow the match string by two times, in 24-hour format, in which case the entry applies only between those two times. For instance, <tt>default_selection Safety 1:30 2:30</tt> boots the entry called <tt>Safety</tt> by default between the hours of 1:30 and 2:30. These times are specified in whatever format the motherboard clock uses (local time or UTC). If the first value is larger than the second, as in <tt>23:00 1:00</tt>, it is interpreted as crossing midnight—11:00 PM to 1:00 AM in this example. The last <tt>default_selection</tt> setting takes precedence over preceding ones <i>if</i> the time value matches. Thus, you can set a main <tt>default_selection</tt> without a time specification and then set one or more others to override the main setting at specific times. If you do not specify a <tt>default_selection</tt>, rEFInd attempts to boot the previously-booted entry, or the first entry if there's no record of that or if the previously-booted entry can't be found.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><tt>include</tt></td>