href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-6/21/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.3</p>
+8/25/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.7.4</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>
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<hr />
systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>
- <li>I have little talent with graphics manipulation programs, so
- rEFInd's boot logo, such as it is, is pretty weak. If you have
- artistic talent and would like to create a rEFInd logo, please feel
- free to send it to me. I won't make any final decision about
- changes until at least June 30 of 2012.</li>
-
<li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
<ul>
+ <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
+ icons.</li>
+
<li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86
or <i>x</i>86-64 systems and displays this information in its
"About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
way to test such changes.</li>
- <li>The code could be more flexible in its handling of the sizes of
- various graphical elements, and particularly drawn text. Prior to
- version 0.2.2, submenu text was invisible on UEFI-based PCs with
- 800x600 and smaller displays because of an inability to properly
- crop the graphics fields that hold the text. With version 0.2.2,
- I've put a band-aid on this problem by reducing the field size so
- that it now works on 800x600 displays, but smaller displays still
- suffer from this problem. This is just an example of the
- inflexibility of certain layout issues within rEFInd.</li>
-
<li>Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple
image sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file,
rEFInd can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the
desired size would be useful.</li>
+ <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
+ purposes.</li>
+
+ <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
+ use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
+ characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
+ monospace fonts.</li>
+
<li>I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
label or counting up the filesystem numbers.</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 so on. This could be handy in case a driver fails to load, or
- to provide an override in case the user inserts a specific
+ <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.</li>
+
+ <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> option in <tt>refind.conf</tt> 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 so on. This could be handy in case a driver fails to
+ load, or to provide an override in case the user inserts a specific
removable disk—by placing the removable disk's name first in
the list, it will take precedence over the normal hard disk
default.</li>
- <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the default_selection might
- be expanded to support some form of specification of disk types, as
- in a special entry for any optical disk or any external disk, no
- matter what its name is.</li>
+ <li>Along the lines of the previous item, the
+ <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some form
+ of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
+ optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>
<li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
<ul>
- <li>I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
- UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
- Macs—or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
- UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
- work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, <a
- href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me</a> for my
- thoughts.)</li>
+ <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
+ some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
+ user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
+ that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
+ a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
+ removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
+ remission.</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
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>
Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
do it.</li>
+ <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
+ features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
+ but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the
+ Mac's built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what
+ causes this problem, I have no Windows installation on my one
+ (elderly) Mac, and I have no way to debug it. Therefore, it's
+ unlikely that I'll be able to fix this problem myself; but if you
+ have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
+ receiving a patch.</li>
+
<li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
This should be investigated and fixed.</li>
caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>
- <li>The 32-bit build of rEFInd displays corrupted volume labels for
- filesystems handled by built-in drivers, but not for the drivers
- provided with rEFInd. This is presumably related to the 32-bit
- driver bug noted below.</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>
+ <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array, rEFInd will detect
+ kernels or boot loaders in RAID 1 twice. This could be fixed by
+ adding a check for duplicate filesystem UUIDs to the
+ partition-scanning code.</li>
+
+ <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
+ when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
+ test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
+ exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. <a
+ href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
+ <tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is
+ <a
+ href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
+ by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though.</li>
+
</ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->
<li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>
forum thread</a> for more information.</li>
<li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
- boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt>
- file.</li>
+ boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
+ One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
+ 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>
-
- <li>Going further, the ability to load arbitrary other fonts, ideally
- in a standard format, would be desirable for theming purposes.</li>
+ <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
+ monitors would be helpful.</li>
<li>A GUI configuration tool would be nice, but it's low on my personal
priority list. If you'd like to contribute, I prefer something
</ul></li> <!-- New features -->
- <li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
+<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>
<ul>
- <li>The 32-bit versions of the drivers return filesystem labels that
- omit the first two characters of the name. If the name is shorter
- than two characters, the driver may return the wrong volume's
- label. The 64-bit builds seem to be unaffected by this bug.</li>
-
- <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
- additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
- RAID setups would be useful, too.</li>
-
- <li>As detailed on the <a href="drivers.html">drivers page,</a> there
- are performance issues with the drivers on some systems. I suspect
- that most "real" computers aren't greatly affected (in my tests,
- the problem is worst with VirtualBox, and the next worst is a
- system that uses <a
- href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/">DUET</a>). Nonetheless,
- I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.</li>
-
- <li>The driver installation procedure could be improved, perhaps by
- adding support for drivers to the <tt>install.sh</tt> script.</li>
+ <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
+ are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
+ welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
+ BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
+ Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
+ for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>
<li>The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
what the volume's real label is.</li>
+ <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
+ 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 -->
+<li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>install.sh</tt>, or other
+ support tools:</b>
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
+ under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
+ partition table. Fix this.</li>
+
+ <li>When updating a system with Secure Boot via an RPM or Debian
+ package, the RPM installation script can detect rEFInd's existing
+ shim or PreLoader program and pass options to <tt>install.sh</tt>
+ to try to copy these programs over themselves. This results in a
+ message that the copy was over the same file and an error message
+ that there were problems with the installation, although this isn't
+ really the case.</li>
+
+ <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>
+
+ </ul></li>
+
</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>