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>
+12/30/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.6.2</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,
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>
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>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.</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>