Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: -12/30/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.6.2
+1/16/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.5I'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!
@@ -90,11 +90,35 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.comMany casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making changes to its settings; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. On Macs, rEFInd also presents legacy BIOS boot options by default. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, refind.conf, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (refind.efi or whatever you've renamed it).
+Many casual users will be able to use rEFInd without making changes to its settings; in its default configuration, the boot manager automatically detects all the EFI boot loader programs you have on your ESP (or your OS X boot partition, in the case of Macs) and displays icons for them. On Macs, rEFInd also presents legacy BIOS boot options by default. Sometimes, though, you may want to tweak rEFInd's configuration. Sometimes you can obtain your desired results by adjusting the filenames of your boot loaders. Other times, you can edit rEFInd's configuration file, refind.conf, which resides in the same directory as its binary file (refind_x64.efi or whatever you've renamed it).
+ +Broadly speaking, rEFInd's configuration file is broken down into two sections: global options and OS stanzas. The global options section sets options that apply globally—to set the timeout period, enable graphics or text mode, and so on. OS stanzas are optional, but if present, they enable you to add new boot options or replace the auto-detected options with customized ones. Both sections include configuration lines and comment lines, the latter being denoted by a leading hash mark (#). rEFInd ignores comment lines, so you can add explanatory text. The default configuration file includes numerous comments explaining each of the options.
+As a special case, rEFInd assigns icons to the Windows and OS X boot loaders based on their conventional locations, so they get suitable icons even if they don't follow these rules.
-In addition to the main OS tag icon, you can set the badge icon for a volume by creating a file called .VolumeBadge.icns in the root directory of a partition. This icon file must include a 32x32 bitmap. If present, it replaces the disk-type icons that are overlaid on the main OS icon. If you use this feature, the badge is applied to all the boot loaders read from the disk, not just those stored in the root directory or the Apple boot loader location. You could use this feature to set a custom badge for different specific disks or to help differentiate multiple OS X installations on one computer. If you don't want any badges, you can replace the three badge icons in the rEFInd icons subdirectory (vol_external.icns, vol_internal.icns, and vol_optical.icns) with a completely transparent badge. The transparent.icns file in the rEFInd icons directory may be used for this purpose.
+In addition to the main OS tag icon, you can set the badge icon for a volume by creating a file called .VolumeBadge.icns or .VolumeBadge.png in the root directory of a partition. This icon file must include a 32x32 bitmap. If present, it replaces the disk-type icons that are overlaid on the main OS icon. If you use this feature, the badge is applied to all the boot loaders read from the disk, not just those stored in the root directory or the Apple boot loader location. You could use this feature to set a custom badge for different specific disks or to help differentiate multiple OS X installations on one computer. If you don't want any badges, you can replace the three badge icons in the rEFInd icons subdirectory (vol_external.icns, vol_internal.icns, and vol_optical.icns) with a completely transparent badge. The transparent.icns file in the rEFInd icons directory may be used for this purpose.
+You can adjust many of rEFInd's options by editing its refind.conf file. You can use any text editor you like for the job, but be sure it saves the file in plain ASCII text, not in a word processing format. (In theory, a UTF-16 encoding should also work, but I've not tried that myself.) Note that the EFI shell includes its own editor. If you need to make a change before you launch an OS, you can launch a shell, change to the rEFInd directory, and type edit refind.conf to edit the file. This EFI editor is quite primitive, but it gets the job done. After editing, you'll need to reboot for rEFInd to read the changed configuration file.
@@ -149,8 +175,8 @@ timeout 20This example sets a timeout of 5 seconds; loads a custom graphic file called custom.bmp from the directory in which refind.efi resides; scans the drivers and EFI/tools/drivers directories for EFI drivers; uses manual boot loader configuration but also scans for external EFI boot loaders and EFI boot loaders on optical discs; and sets the default boot loader to the first loader found that includes the string elilo. Of course, since this file specifies use of manual boot loader configuration, it's not complete; you'll need to add at least one OS stanza to be able to boot from anything but an external disk or optical drive, as described shortly.
+This example sets a timeout of 5 seconds; loads a custom graphic file called custom.bmp from the directory in which the rEFInd binary resides; scans the drivers and EFI/tools/drivers directories for EFI drivers; uses manual boot loader configuration but also scans for external EFI boot loaders and EFI boot loaders on optical discs; and sets the default boot loader to the first loader found that includes the string elilo. Of course, since this file specifies use of manual boot loader configuration, it's not complete; you'll need to add at least one OS stanza to be able to boot from anything but an external disk or optical drive, as described shortly.
+OS stanzas in rEFInd are similar to those in GRUB Legacy, GRUB 2, or ELILO. You can use them to add configuration options to those that are auto-detected. You cannot modify the auto-detected options, though; if you just want to tweak one OS's configuration, you have several options, none of which is ideal:
@@ -372,11 +400,13 @@ menuentry "Windows via shell script" {mm 0003003E 8 -pci fs0:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi-
This example writes data to the computer's PCI bus via the EFI shell's mm command and then launches Windows. Chances are you won't need to engage in such operations, and I do not recommend you try this exact example unless you know what you're doing! This command was required to activate the video hardware on a computer of a person with whom I corresponded prior to booting Windows, but such needs are rare.
+This example writes data to the computer's PCI bus via the EFI shell's mm command and then launches Windows. Chances are you won't need to engage in such operations, and I do not recommend you try this exact example unless you know what you're doing! This command was required to activate the video hardware on a computer of a person with whom I corresponded prior to booting Windows, but such needs are rare. Another example of a similar approach can be found in this forum thread. A few pointers on finding addresses for your hardware can be found in this post.
You can combine these OS stanzas with the global refind.conf options presented earlier. The result would contain just two entries on the rEFInd boot menu (for Gentoo and Windows, since the Ubuntu entry is disabled), unless rEFInd found other boot options on an external or optical disk.
+As described on the Using rEFInd page, rEFInd can present a menu of options for certain loader tags when you press the Insert, F2, or + key. rEFInd does this automatically when it detects Mac OS X or ELILO boot loaders, or when you set the OS type via the ostype option. The Mac OS X boot loader, in particular, accepts various options that you can use to boot in various ways.
@@ -472,7 +502,7 @@ menuentry Gentoo {copyright © 2012 by Roderick W. Smith
+copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith
This document is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.