Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-2/1/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.8.5
+7/26/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.9.0
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@@ -209,6 +211,14 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
support files.
+
A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
+ icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
+ distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
+ BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
+ booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
+ probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
+ loader files or boot sector code.
+
Known bugs that need squashing:
@@ -260,6 +270,13 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
have the equipment and skill to do so, I'd be interested in
receiving a patch.
+
If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
+ BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
+ additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
+ menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
+ extended/logical partitions in the refind/lib.c file, but
+ I haven't fully tracked it down.
+
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.
@@ -317,15 +334,6 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
can see how it could be for some people.
-
I've received queries about rEFInd's ability to work with Apple's
- whole-disk encryption scheme that's new with OS X 10.7.
- Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to test this, but my
- understanding is that it will work correctly if rEFInd is
- installed in the ESP rather than on the Mac OS X root partition.
- See this
- forum thread for more information.
-
I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
boot options and then save them to the refind.conf file.
One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
@@ -336,6 +344,13 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
them, so that they can be modified manually.
+
Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
+ actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
+ complete keyboards.
+
+
The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
+ monitors or who use tablets would be helpful.
+
GRUB provides a configuration-file command called outb
that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
via the mm command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
@@ -360,13 +375,11 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
change its icon.
-
The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
- monitors would be helpful.
-
-
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
- written in a cross-platform GUI toolkit, so that a single code base
- can be used on any of the major OSes.
+
A GUI configuration tool for host OSes (Linux, OS X, Windows, etc.)
+ would be nice, but it's low on my personal priority list. If you'd
+ like to contribute, I prefer something written in a cross-platform
+ GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
+ major OSes.
@@ -404,14 +417,6 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
partition table. Fix this.
-
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 install.sh
- 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.
-
rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
@@ -425,7 +430,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
-