Originally written: 3/19/2012; last Web page update: -6/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.12
+6/27/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.7.0I'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!
@@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comThis method requires that your /boot directory, whether it's on a separate partition or is a regular directory in your root (/) filesystem, be readable by the EFI. At the moment, all EFI implementations can read FAT and Macs can read HFS+. By using drivers, you can make any EFI read HFS+, ISO-9660, ReiserFS, ext2fs, ext3fs, or ext4fs. Thus, if you use any of these filesystems on a regular partition (not an LVM or RAID configuration) that holds your kernels in /boot, you qualify for this easy method. The default partition layouts used by Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other distributions qualify, because they use one of these filesystems (usually ext4fs) in a normal partition or on a separate /boot partition. You must also have a 3.3.0 or later Linux kernel with EFI stub support, of course.
+This method requires that your /boot directory, whether it's on a separate partition or is a regular directory in your root (/) filesystem, be readable by the EFI. At the moment, all EFI implementations can read FAT and Macs can read HFS+. By using drivers, you can make any EFI read HFS+, ISO-9660, ReiserFS, ext2fs, ext3fs, ext4fs, or Btrfs. Thus, if you use any of these filesystems on a regular partition (not an LVM or RAID configuration) that holds your kernels in /boot, you qualify for this easy method. The default partition layouts used by Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other distributions qualify, because they use one of these filesystems (usually ext4fs) in a normal partition or on a separate /boot partition. You must also have a 3.3.0 or later Linux kernel with EFI stub support, of course.
If you installed rEFInd 0.6.0 or later with its install.sh script from your regular Linux installation, chances are everything's set up; you should be able to reboot and see your Linux kernels as boot options. If you installed manually, from OS X, or from an emergency system, though, you may need to do a couple of things manually: @@ -250,7 +250,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
If your /boot directory happens to be on an XFS, JFS, or Btrfs partition that the EFI can't read, or it's tucked away in an LVM or RAID configuration that the EFI can't read, you won't be able to use the easiest solution. Fortunately, this problem can be overcome with relatively little fuss. Several variant procedures are possible, but I begin by describing one that will almost always work, although it's got some important caveats (described at the end). You should perform the following steps as root, or precede each of these commands with sudo:
+If your /boot directory happens to be on an XFS or JFS partition that the EFI can't read, or it's tucked away in an LVM or RAID configuration that the EFI can't read, you won't be able to use the easiest solution. Fortunately, this problem can be overcome with relatively little fuss. Several variant procedures are possible, but I begin by describing one that will almost always work, although it's got some important caveats (described at the end). You should perform the following steps as root, or precede each of these commands with sudo:
Once this task is done, updates to your kernel will automatically be stored in the root directory of your ESP, where rEFInd will automatically detect them. Thus, the boot configuration becomes maintenance-free. The procedure as just described has some drawbacks, though. By placing your kernels in the root directory of your ESP, you render them vulnerable to any other OS with which you might be dual-booting. Your ESP must also be large enough to hold all your kernels. If you dual-boot with multiple Linux distributions, they might conceivably overwrite each others' kernels, and distinguishing one from another becomes more difficult.
-For these reasons, a variant of this procedure is desirable on some systems. Most of the steps are similar, but in this variant, you create a separate /boot partition that's independent of the ESP. This partition can use FAT, HFS+, ReiserFS, ext2fs, ext3fs, or ext4fs; but if you use any of the last five filesystems (four on Macs), you must install the matching EFI filesystem driver that ships with rEFInd. Creating the filesystem will normally require you to shrink an existing partition by a suitable amount (200–500MiB). Mount your new /boot partition at a temporary location, copy or move the current /boot files into it, unmount it, and add it to /etc/fstab as /boot.
+For these reasons, a variant of this procedure is desirable on some systems. Most of the steps are similar, but in this variant, you create a separate /boot partition that's independent of the ESP. This partition can use FAT, HFS+, ReiserFS, ext2fs, ext3fs, ext4fs, or Btrfs; but if you use any of the last six filesystems (five on Macs), you must install the matching EFI filesystem driver that ships with rEFInd. Creating the filesystem will normally require you to shrink an existing partition by a suitable amount (200–500MiB). Mount your new /boot partition at a temporary location, copy or move the current /boot files into it, unmount it, and add it to /etc/fstab as /boot.
-If your distribution already uses a separate /boot partition, but if it uses XFS or some other unsuitable filesystem, you can back it up, create a fresh FAT, HFS+, ReiserFS, ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystem on it, and restore the original files. You'll probably need to adjust the UUID value in /etc/fstab to ensure that the computer mounts the new filesystem when you boot. If you use a separate non-ESP /boot partition, you'll probably want to continue mounting the ESP at /boot/efi.
+If your distribution already uses a separate /boot partition, but if it uses XFS or some other unsuitable filesystem, you can back it up, create a fresh FAT, HFS+, ReiserFS, Btrfs, ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystem on it, and restore the original files. You'll probably need to adjust the UUID value in /etc/fstab to ensure that the computer mounts the new filesystem when you boot. If you use a separate non-ESP /boot partition, you'll probably want to continue mounting the ESP at /boot/efi.
Ordinarily, a kernel booted in this way must reside on the ESP, or at least on another FAT partition. On a Macintosh, though, you can use HFS+ to house your kernel files. In fact, that may be necessary; my Mac Mini hangs when I try to boot a Linux kernel via an EFI stub loader from the computer's ESP, but it works fine when booting from an HFS+ partition. If you use EFI drivers, though, you can place your kernel on any filesystem for which an EFI driver exists. This list is currently rather limited (ext2fs/ext3fs, ReiserFS, ISO-9660, and HFS+), but even just one or two options might help a lot if you've got an undersized ESP or if copying your kernel file to the ESP is a hassle you'd rather avoid.
+Ordinarily, a kernel booted in this way must reside on the ESP, or at least on another FAT partition. On a Macintosh, though, you can use HFS+ to house your kernel files. In fact, that may be necessary; my Mac Mini hangs when I try to boot a Linux kernel via an EFI stub loader from the computer's ESP, but it works fine when booting from an HFS+ partition. If you use EFI drivers, though, you can place your kernel on any filesystem for which an EFI driver exists. This list is currently good (ext2fs/ext3fs, ext4fs, ReiserFS, Btrfs, ISO-9660, and HFS+), so chances are you'll be able to use this method to boot your kernel from your root (/) partition or from a /boot partition.
rEFInd sorts boot loader entries within each directory by time stamp, so that the most recent entry comes first. Thus, if you specify a directory name (or a volume label, for loaders stored in a volume's root directory) as the default_selection, rEFInd will make the most recent loader in the directory the default. This can obviate the need to adjust this configuration parameter when you add a new kernel; chances are you want the most recently-added kernel to be the default, and rEFInd makes it so when you set the default_selection in this way. If you don't want the latest kernel to become the default, you can use touch to give the desired kernel (or other boot loader) in the directory a more recent time stamp, or you can set default_selection to a value that uniquely identifies your desired default loader. One caveat you should keep in mind is that the EFI and Windows interpret the hardware clock as local time, whereas Mac OS X uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Linux can work either way. Thus, time stamps for boot loaders can be skewed by several hours depending on the environment in which they were created or last modified.