href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-12/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.5.0</p>
+1/8/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.4</p>
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from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</li>
+ <li>Currently, if a filesystem's label comes up empty, rEFInd
+ substitutes the size, so you get displays like <tt>boot
+ EFI\foo\bar.efi from 90 GiB volume</tt>. I'd like to add more
+ checks to substitute the GPT <i>partition</i> label if the
+ <i>filesystem</i> label comes up empty, or add a filesystem type
+ identifier to the size.</li>
+
<li>The default_selection option in refind.conf could be improved by
supporting a list of default options, so that if the first item
isn't found, rEFInd will try to boot the second one in the list,
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>When in Secure Boot mode, rEFInd can launch just one driver that's
- signed with a shim key or MOK. The second and later drivers
- generate "access denied" errors. <!-- I think this is because of
- the fast-and-loose sample code I borrowed from shim, which re-uses
- rEFInd's own image handle (the <tt>image_handle</tt> variable in
- <tt>start_image()</tt>) for launching shim/MOK-signed binaries. The
- result is that when the second driver is loaded, it can't register
- itself with the firmware because the firmware believes it's already
- been registered. The solution is likely to involve creating a child
- image handle rather than re-using rEFInd's own image handle, but
- this is likely to be tedious to do—see
- <tt>/usr/local/UDK2010/MyWorkSpace/MdeModulePkg/Core/Dxe/Image/Image.c</tt>
- for the reference UEFI implementation. --> </li>
-
- <li>When launching ELILO in Secure Boot mode, ELILO can't find its
- configuration file. It's possible that a similar problem exists for
- other boot loaders, too.</li>
-
- <li>When setting a resolution higher than about 800x600 (or maybe even
- 640x480) in text mode, the text displayed by rEFInd, and on some
- systems shells and other programs launched from rEFInd, is
- restricted to an 80x24-character area in the top-left corner of the
- screen.</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.
implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
let it go.</li>
- <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based
+ <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
fixed.</li>
caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
+ <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
+ slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
+ in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
+ volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
+ /boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
+ and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.</li>
+
<li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
similar problems.</li>
<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>
stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
boot loader file.</li>
+ <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
+ information utility—something to tell you about your hard
+ disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
+ the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
+ and in recovering from boot problems.</li>
+
+ <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
+ A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
+ requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work
+ only from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented
+ as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
+ written in C.</li>
+
<li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
change its icon.</li>
- <li>A way to read boot options set via <tt>efibootmgr</tt>,
- <tt>bless</tt>, or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot
- set would be useful.</li>
-
- <li>A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful.
- This would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk
- boot. Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be
- launched much like the shell or <tt>gptsync</tt>.</li>
-
- <li>I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
- single-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.</li>
-
<li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.</li>
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>
+<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
<ul>
- <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>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Given the talk of
+ shifting to Btrfs, that should be the priority; however, other
+ Linux filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
RAID setups would be useful, too.</li>
to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
desirable.</li>
+ <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
+ one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
+ <i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
+ computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
+ This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
+ since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
+ that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->
</ul>
<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>