Assuming rEFInd starts up correctly, you should see its main screen, which resembles the following:
-
-
If you don't press any key before the timeout (shown on the last line) expires, the default boot loader will launch. This is normally the first item in the menu, but you can adjust the default by editing the configuration file. (In this example, it's the SUSE loader, which is further identified by text above the timeout as vmlinuz-3.4.6-2.10-desktop from SUSE boot.)
+If you don't press any key before the timeout (shown below the icons and description line) expires, the default boot loader will launch. This is normally the first item in the menu, but you can adjust the default by editing the configuration file. (In this example, it's the Ubuntu Linux loader, which is further identified by text above the timeout as vmlinuz-3.5.0-27-generic from UBUNTU BOOT.)
-This display is dominated by the central set of OS tags (icons), which in this example includes tags for OS X, Windows, SUSE, and an unkown boot loader. All but the last of these are on hard disks, but the unknown boot loader is on an optical disc, as revealed by the small icons (known as badges) in the lower-right corner of the OS icons.
+This display is dominated by the central set of OS tags (icons), which in this example includes tags for an unknown boot loader, OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu. All but the first of these are on hard disks, but the unknown boot loader is on an optical disc, as revealed by the small icons (known as badges) in the lower-right corner of the OS icons.
-In this example, the SUSE tag is selected. You can move the selection left by pressing the left arrow key and right by pressing the right arrow key. If your system has many boot loaders, an arrow icon will appear to the right of the boot loader list, indicating that the boot loader list will scroll when you move off the right edge. If you do this, an arrow icon will appear to the left of the icon list, indicating that you can scroll back in a similar manner. You can scroll the list by one line full of icons by using the Page Up or Page Down keys to move left and right, respectively. Moving past the final selection or using the down arrow key moves the selection to the second row of small tags, which launch ancillary programs or perform special actions. If you've moved the selection cursor to the second row, pressing the up arrow key or scrolling past the left edge of the second row moves the cursor to the top row. In this figure, these five tags are present:
+In this example, the Ubuntu tag is selected. You can move the selection left by pressing the left arrow key and right by pressing the right arrow key. If your system has many boot loaders, an arrow icon will appear to the right and/or left of the boot loader list, indicating that the boot loader list will scroll when you move off the edge. (Such arrows are visible to the right and left in the sample screen.) You can scroll the list by one line full of icons by using the Page Up or Page Down keys to move left and right, respectively. Moving past the final selection or using the down arrow key moves the selection to the second row of small tags, which launch ancillary programs or perform special actions. If you've moved the selection cursor to the second row, pressing the up arrow key or scrolling past the left edge of the second row moves the cursor to the top row. In this figure, these five tags are present:
- Launch the EFI shell -
- Launch the MokManager utility +
- Launch the tool to create a hybrid MBR (gptsync)
- Produce an information page -
- Shut down the computer -
- Reboot the computer +
- Exit from rEFInd +
The last three of these options are always available by default, but the first depends on the presence of the EFI shell program file, as described earlier. To get the MokManager icon, you must install MokManager.efi, as well. Other ancillary tags may be present on other computers.
+By default, the options to display an information page, shutdown the computer, and reboot the computer are present. Options to launch a shell, launch the Apple recovery utility, and launch the Machine Owner Key (MOK) utility will also appear automatically if these utilities are installed. Options to launch the hybrid MBR tool and to exit from rEFInd are not displayed by default; you must edit the configuration file to enable these features, or to disable those that are displayed by default.
-To launch an OS or utility, you should select its tag and then press the Enter key. If you press the Insert, F2, or + key, rEFInd will show a menu that may hold additional options, depending on the OS type. The following figure shows the submenu for Mac OS X. You can use this menu much like the main menu; move the cursor to select the option you want to use, then press the Enter key to launch the boot loader with the selected options. Press the Esc key or select Return to Main Menu to return to the main menu. You can also press the Insert key again to edit your boot loader options. A simple text-mode line editor opens, enabling you to move a cursor back and forth in the line with your arrow keys, delete text, and type in new text. If you want to boot with your edited options, press the Enter key. If you decide you picked the wrong entry, press the Esc key.
- -
+
To launch an OS or utility, you should select its tag and then press the Enter key or the space bar.
@@ -158,7 +194,24 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comOn some computers, the firmware doesn't mount external USB media unless you adjust a firmware option or use the EFI's own boot manager prior to launching rEFInd. If you don't see external media appear in rEFInd's list, consult your computer's manual or examine its firmware to locate a relevant option.
-If your computer supports Secure Boot, you may find that some of your OSes and tools won't work; they'll produce Access Denied error messages. You can overcome this problem by creating a signing key, signing your binaries with it, and adding the public version of that key to your machine owner key (MOK) list. This process is described on the Managing Secure Boot page.
+ +Adjusting Boot Options
+ + +If you press the Insert, F2, or + key, rEFInd will show a menu that may hold additional options, depending on the OS type. (OS X and Linux are most likely to hold interesting options on their submenus.) The following figure shows the submenu for Mac OS X. You can use this menu much like the main menu; move the cursor to select the option you want to use, then press the Enter key to launch the boot loader with the selected options. Press the Esc key or select Return to Main Menu to return to the main menu.
+ ++ +
From the options submenu, you can press the Insert, F2, or + key again to edit your boot loader options. You're most likely to want to do this when booting Linux via its EFI stub loader, since you can then enter arbitrary kernel options. A simple text-mode line editor opens (shown below), enabling you to move a cursor back and forth in the line with your arrow keys, delete text, and type in new text. If you want to boot with your edited options, press the Enter key. If you decide you picked the wrong entry, press the Esc key. Note that long option lists, as shown in the figure, scroll off the edge of the screen. Moving the cursor past the screen edge scrolls the entire line of text.
+ +
+ + +
If your computer supports Secure Boot, you may find that some of your OSes and tools won't work; they'll produce Secure Boot validation failure error messages. You can overcome this problem by creating a signing key, signing your binaries with it, and adding the public version of that key to your machine owner key (MOK) list. This process is described on the Managing Secure Boot page.
Using Keyboard Shortcuts
@@ -213,7 +266,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comFor all such cases, rEFInd supports booting legacy OSes; however, the details vary between Macs and UEFI PCs. Also, be aware that some UEFI PCs lack the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) that's required for this feature to work. This is true even of some computers that can boot BIOS-based OSes natively. This can happen because the firmware is basically a BIOS with a UEFI implementation tacked on top of it; such systems rely on the native BIOS to boot, and may not provide a way for EFI applications to access the BIOS features via CSM mechanisms. If you have such a computer and if you enable a legacy boot option in the configuration file, rEFInd notifies you of its inability to present legacy boot options when it starts up. rEFInd's legacy boot support also depends on features that are not available in the GNU-EFI development package, so you may see a similar notice if you run a version of rEFInd compiled with that package. (The primary build available on the Getting rEFInd page is compiled with the TianoCore EDK2 package, which does support the BIOS boot features.)
-The scanfor option, described on the Configuring the Boot Manager page, controls rEFInd's detection of legacy OSes. On Macs, the default is to scan for such OSes, since a common boot scenario on Macs is dual-booting OS X and Windows, and of course BIOS support is required for this. (rEFInd 0.4.5 and earlier did not scan for legacy OSes by default, though, so you may need to change this option if you're upgrading and don't want to scan for legacy OSes.) On UEFI PCs, rEFInd defaults to not scanning for legacy OSes; thus, you must edit the scanfor item in the configuration file if you want to boot a legacy OS on a UEFI PC.
+The scanfor option, described on the Configuring the Boot Manager page, controls rEFInd's detection of legacy OSes. On Macs, the default is to scan for such OSes, since a common boot scenario on Macs is dual-booting OS X and Windows, and of course BIOS support is required for this. On UEFI PCs, rEFInd defaults to not scanning for legacy OSes; thus, you must edit the scanfor item in the configuration file if you want to boot a legacy OS on a UEFI PC.
-On Macs, rEFInd uses a flexible scanning algorithm inherited from rEFIt. This procedure detects most legacy OSes on most disks, although it can sometimes miss an OS. This scanning algorithm can often identify the legacy OS you've installed and present a suitable icon. On UEFI PCs, rEFInd relies on the computer's NVRAM settings to determine which legacy boot loaders to scan; if an OS isn't listed in the NVRAM settings, rEFInd won't present it as an option. On most UEFI PCs, at least one hard disk and your optical drive appear as options. The two computers I've tested have failed to present USB flash drives as boot options when inserted, though. You may be able to get additional options to appear by editing your boot list in your firmware's setup utility, but I can make no promises about this. The UEFI scanning procedure is also incapable of detecting the OS type, so you'll see a generic legacy OS icon, as shown at the right.
+On Macs, rEFInd uses a flexible scanning algorithm inherited from rEFIt. This procedure detects most legacy OSes on most disks, although it can sometimes miss an OS. This scanning algorithm can often identify the legacy OS you've installed and present a suitable icon. On UEFI PCs, rEFInd relies on the computer's NVRAM settings to determine which legacy boot loaders to scan, but rEFInd does tell the firmware to find every BIOS-mode boot option and add it to its NVRAM list. On most UEFI PCs, at least one hard disk and your optical drive appear as options. On one computer I tested (a Lenovo laptop), the internal hard disk appears in the rEFInd menu as a removable disk, and selecting any BIOS-mode option causes the computer to attempt a network boot. Three other computers I've tested behave more sensibly. If you opt to scan for BIOS-mode optical disks (scanfor cd) on UEFI-based PCs, an icon will appear whether or not your drive holds a CD. The UEFI scanning procedure is also incapable of detecting the OS type, so you'll see a generic legacy OS icon, as shown at the right.
+ +On both PCs and Macs, if you see non-functional legacy boot options, you can remove them by using the dont_scan_volumes token in refind.conf: Add any substring from the description that appears when you highlight the non-functional option to the set of options to have rEFInd ignore that entry. (Note that you must provide a complete volume name when excluding EFI volumes from scanning. The legacy-mode exclusion operation is more flexible in this regard.)
-
copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith
+copyright © 2012–2014 by Roderick W. Smith
This document is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.