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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!
0.9.2 (9/19/2015)—Soon after releasing 0.9.1, I started receiving bug reports about problems with it and Shim 0.8. (See this thread for one such report.) It turns out that the problem was not a new bug in rEFInd, but rather a change from Shim 0.7 to Shim 0.8 that made it next to useless with rEFInd. Specifically, Shim 0.8 now de-registers itself from the EFI after a follow-on program launches another one. This is done to avoid problems in a boot path in which Shim launches fallback.efi, which in turn launches another Shim. This creates a new problem, though: rEFInd can validate just one binary before it's "cut off" from Shim. Since rEFInd's drivers are binaries, if you use a single driver, that means that you won't be able to launch anything that requires validation via Shim. I quickly discovered a workaround, which I've implemented in this release. I consider this a "band-aid" patch, though, because it relies on a quirk of Shim's logic to bypass its de-registration. As such, the workaround in this release may break with a future Shim. A true fix will take longer to develop. I want to release this workaround version to head off further problems in the near term, though. This version also introduces a new feature, which is also Shim-related: Since version 0.7, Shim has supported launching binaries other than grubx64.efi by passing them on the command line. (Actually, Shim 0.4 supported this, but it required a broken path specification.) I've added support for this feature to install.sh: Adding the --keepname option to install.sh causes the script to preserve rEFInd's regular filename and to register the approprirate follow-on parameters to have Shim launch rEFInd by that name. This works, but is likely to be more delicate than using the default Shim follow-on name of grubx64.efi. The advantage, of course, is that rEFInd needn't "lie" about its name, which makes for less confusion in filenames. For the moment, the RPM and Debian packages I build do not use this new naming feature, since I can't be sure what version of Shim might be picked up. These changes do not affect users who do not use Secure Boot.
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0.9.1 (9/13/2015)—This version has improved the Discoverable Partitions Specification (DPS) support in a number of ways that should make it more reliable when /etc/fstab omits references to the root (/) partition or when the GPT read-only or do-not-automount options are used to control these features. A stray DPS-related debugging print command has also been removed. I've improved rEFInd's ability to guess the Linux distribution by having it examine /etc/lsb-release as well as /etc/os_release, and I've added an icon for Elementary OS. Finally, I've made improvements to rEFInd's handling of case-insensitive string comparisons, which were buggy on some EFIs, particularly when rEFInd was compiled with GNU-EFI. rEFInd is still at the mercy of the EFI and support libraries, but many problem cases should now be resolved.
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0.9.0 (7/26/2015—This version gets a bump up to 0.9.0 mainly because of a highly user-visible new feature: kernel folding. With kernel folding active, multiple Linux kernels in a single directory appear as just one main-menu entry, which launches the most recent kernel (by file timestamp) by default. Older kernels appear on the first one's submenu (accessed by hitting F2 or Insert). You can disable this new feature by setting fold_linux_kernels false in refind.conf. Another new feature is support for the Discoverable Partitions Spec, which enables rEFInd to locate the Linux root (/) partition without a refind_linux.conf or /etc/fstab entry. I know of no distribution that automatically sets up its partitions in this way, but if and when this starts to happen, rEFInd will be ready. Other changes are relatively minor: The Debian postinst script now calls install.sh with --localkeys if sbsign and openssl are available, which helps if using the Ubuntu PPA on a system with custom Secure Boot keys; I've fixed a packaging bug that prevented IA32 versions of filesystem drivers and gptsync to not be built in the PPA; mkrlconf.sh now refuses to run under OS X; rEFInd now skips checking for BIOS-mode boot code on UEFI-based PCs, which should speed it up a little; I've fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to crash if it found an existing but empty refind_linux.conf file; I've made minor code changes to enable rEFInd to build under GCC 5.1; and I've added a new icon for Kali Linux (provided by Francesco D'Eugenio).
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0.8.7 (3/1/2015)—This release provides bug fixes and refinements to existing features. Several changes should reduce the odds of rEFInd crashing because of assorted problems. Other changes improve Secure Boot handling, including improved Secure Boot detection in install.sh, recognition of KeyTool.efi and KeyTool-signed.efi as MOK manager utilities, and reporting of Secure Boot status for x86 (IA-32) systems in the rEFInd information screen. Filesystem detection is improved (again), and XFS has been added as a known filesystem. Detection of FreeBSD's BIOS-mode boot loader is improved, which should give more Mac users the right OS icon when booting FreeBSD in BIOS mode. A bug in install.sh that caused inappropriate installation to the filename bootx64.efi or bootia32.efi, and failure to update the computer's boot list, has been squashed. Finally, I'm deprecating the use of fsx: notation for referring to filesystems. The numbering of filesystems is simply unreliable, and better alternatives (the use of partition GUIDs, partition names, and filesystem names) have been added in previous releases. The fsx: code remains in rEFInd, and if it's working for you, you can continue to use it; but sooner or later I'll remove that code, so you're advised to change your manual boot stanzas and other options that use it before that happens.
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0.8.6 (2/8/2015)—Most (but not all) of this release's changes focus on Windows dual-booting and Mac-specific issues. There's a new Windows 8 icon, which is now used by default as the Windows icon, although the old icon remains available and is used for Windows XP and earlier boots on Macs. If the NTFS driver is loaded, rEFInd will now exclude non-bootable NTFS volumes from the Mac boot list (this change does not affect UEFI-based PCs). A bug that caused misidentification of whole disks and NTFS volumes as being FAT has been fixed (again, this problem affected Macs, not PCs). A couple of Mac-specific install.sh bugs have been fixed, resulting in more reliable identification of the ESP and of the installation directory. Previous versions ignored a volume name of "HFS+ volume" because that name was produced by earlier versions of the rEFInd HFS+ driver for all HFS+ volumes; but the current HFS+ driver produces a real volume name, so I've removed that special case from the code. I've removed the r472 rEFIt commit, introduced in 0.8.5, because it was causing some BMP files to fail to load. Finally, the hideui token in refind.conf now accepts a value of badges, which has the effect of hiding the disk-type badges associated with OS launch icons.
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0.8.5 (2/1/2015)—The biggest single change with this version is a new NTFS driver contributed by Samuel Liao, who also contributed the Btrfs driver. Samuel also contributed some miscellaneous driver fixes and a change to the way the keyboard is handled, which improves responsiveness on some systems. This version also improves the way install.sh works under OS X. In particular, it tweaks the bless command in a way that may eliminate startup delays and it does a better job of detecting and replacing existing rEFInd installations (on the ESP), rather than blindly writing to EFI/BOOT. Finally, this version applies commits from late in rEFIt's history: r467, which improves handling of BIOS/legacy boots from the second and subsequent disks on Macs; and r472, which enables handling BMP images that are not vertically flipped. These commits were not present in rEFInd from the start because the starting point for rEFInd was a Debian source package taken from a slightly earlier version.
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0.8.4 (12/8/2014)—OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite") made changes that necessitated alterations to both rEFInd's install.sh script and rEFInd defaults. Specifically, Yosemite now uses a form of logical volume management (LVM) that makes installing rEFInd to the OS X root directory impossible, so the default location is changed to the ESP. Changes to the default for dont_scan_volumes are necessary to make the new location for the OS X boot loader show up. Another big change is in the new (but experimental) support for network booting, with the help of iPXE. See the BUILDING.txt file in the source package for details on how to build and install the necessary files. A new option for refind.conf, enable_and_lock_vmx, sets the VMX bit on Intel CPUs, which is necessary for booting some hypervisors, such as Hyper-V. This feature can be set on many computers' EFIs, but some, such as Macs, lack this ability. (Do not set this option on AMD CPUs or older Intel CPUs that lack this feature, though!) If rEFInd can't find its icons directory, it now drops back to text mode. A bug in dont_scan_files has been fixed, enabling you to specify a complete path to certain special-case boot loaders to omit them from scans. Finally, I've updated the icons for Fedora and Ubuntu and added an icon for Xubuntu.
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0.8.3 (7/6/2014)—This version introduces a number of minor bug fixes and feature improvements. The most user-visible of these are that on Macs, rEFInd now displays a partition's label for BIOS-bootable OSes on filesystems that rEFInd can't read; and you can now pass timeout = -1 in refind.conf to have rEFInd boot the default OS immediately unless there's a keypress when rEFInd loads, in which case that keypress is read as a shortcut key. A change that's less likely to be noticed is that the default setting for scan_all_linux_kernels is now true. Since this option had been uncommented in the sample configuration file, this change will not affect most people. I've fixed a bug that caused rEFInd to unload drivers as soon as they were loaded. This didn't affect rEFInd's drivers because they ignored the relevant EFI calls; but this was preventing some other drivers from working. I've added two new icons, one for Mythbuntu and the other for the Clover boot manager. Finally, I've removed Oracle's GPLv2 code from the core filesystem driver code, since it was incompatible with the GPLv3 used by the Btrfs driver. This change shouldn't affect the operation of the drivers, but there's a slim chance that it will.
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0.8.2 (6/8/2014)—I've continued to refine the UEFI BIOS-mode boot code with this version; it now uses the BIOS-mode boot entries provided by the firmware by default, and actively scans for new entries only if the deep_uefi_legacy_scan token is present in refind.conf. This change is motivated by reports I've received of BIOS-mode boot entries multiplying on some systems; however, a deep scan is required to detect the second and subsequent disks on other computers. A second important change is that the default selection is now the last-booted item rather than the first item in the list. You can still set a fixed default via the default_selection token, and in fact if you provide a list that begins with +, the default will be the previously-booted item unless it can't be found, in which case the subsequent items in the list will be tried. Minor changes include the addition of an icon for Mageia Linux, a minor bug fix in GUID-parsing code, and an update of my personal build system from TianoCore UDK2010.SR1.UP1.P1 to UDK2014. This last item will affect anybody else who uses TianoCore to build rEFInd, since some default paths have changed, so you may need to update yourself or adjust the path in Make.tiano.
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0.8.1 (5/15/2014)—The biggest code change in this version is that rEFInd's UEFI-style BIOS-mode boot code now works when rEFInd is built with GNU-EFI as well as when built with Tianocore. This change won't affect users of my binary builds, which have long been made with Tianocore, but if your distribution builds rEFInd with GNU-EFI, it might interest you. Some user-noticeable bug fixes include a fix to a bug that could cause rEFInd to omit boot loaders on a partition's root directory, a fix to a bug that caused .VolumeIcon.icns to take a higher-than-intended precedence on OS X boot volumes, a fix to a bug that could cause a BIOS-mode boot from the wrong device in UEFI mode, and improved centering of BIOS-mode boot descriptions on the screen. Other changes include two new optional bitmap fonts (Ubuntu Mono and Nimbus Mono), omission of messages about scanning of boot loaders when scan_delay is set to 1, a change to the search order for icons (PNG files now override ICNS files), and a conversion of all the icons in the icons directory from ICNS to PNG format. Note that this last change may necessitate changing manual boot stanzas if you refer to icons in the default icon directory, depending on how you upgrade rEFInd.
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0.8.0 (5/4/2014)—The biggest changes with this version relate to BIOS/CSM/legacy support, particularly on UEFI-based PCs. This version can now boot from the second (or later) hard disk on such computers, and is more likely to be able to cope with removable disks. On both Macs and PCs, you can also now use dont_scan_volumes to remove a legacy-boot option from the boot list, so long as it has a unique name (as shown in rEFInd's main menu when you highlight the option). This version also introduces the ability to use partition names and partition GUIDs to refer to devices (in dont_scan_volumes, displayed in the rEFInd menu, and so on). Note that partition names are stored in GPT data structures. These are different from filesystem names, which are stored in filesystem data structures. rEFInd now limits the length of the firmware identity string shown in the "About" screen, to prevent problems with the string overrunning the space available on an 800x600 display. Finally, I've fixed a memory-allocation bug that caused error message displays on some systems when re-scanning boot loaders. This bug might conceivably have caused some systems to hang when re-scanning, too.
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0.7.9 (4/20/2014)—This version includes a number of bug fixes: install.sh no longer displays error messages if the dmraid utility isn't available; the HFS+ driver now reports a correct volume name; filesystem driver bugs that could cause lockups have been fixed; a redundant "utility" in the MOK utility's description has been removed; and an (as-yet untested) attempt to fix a continuous-rescanning problem after ejecting a disc on some computers has been implemented. In addition, rEFInd now removes redundant kernel entries on Ubuntu systems to keep the menu uncluttered and a new gdisk option has been added to the showtools item. (An EFI version of my gdisk utility can be built with the help of the UEFI GPT fdisk library.)
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0.7.8 (3/9/2014—This version emphasizes changes to icon and banner graphics handling. Internally, rEFInd can now scale graphics, which previous versions could not do. To make use of this feature, three new refind.conf tokens now exist: big_icon_size and small_icon_size set the sizes of big (first-row OS) and small (second-row tool) icons; and banner_scale tells rEFInd to draw banners to a 1:1 scale (noscale, the default) or to scale the banner to fill the screen (fillscreen). See Table 1 on the configuration page of this document for more on these new options. I've also adjusted the post-installation script used by the RPM and Debian packages to search for existing Shim programs called shimx64.efi, not just shim.efi (as had been done before). This should help when installing a package on distributions that use the shimx64.efi filename, such as Ubuntu. Finally, I'm providing a preliminary set of Debian packaging files, which may help distribution maintainers to adopt rEFInd.
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0.7.7 (1/3/2014)—A new configuration file token, windows_recovery_files, leads this list of changes; you can use it to specify files that boot Windows recovery tools. If you include the windows_recovery option on the showtools line, these files will then be represented by a small Windows recovery badge on the second row rather than as a full-sized OS loader, thus reducing clutter and making the purpose of this loader clearer. You can also now specify a complete path to dont_scan_files items, including a volume specifier. The use_graphics_for, also_scan_dirs, dont_scan_dirs, dont_scan_files, scan_driver_dirs, and windows_recovery_files tokens can all now accept + as their first option, which causes subsequent list items to be added to their defaults rather than replacing them. The configuration file can now be specified at program launch by passing a -c option, as in -c myconf.conf; you can use this feature to set up a manual boot stanza that launches rEFInd with modified boot options. Scans of ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS partitions now omit partitions with filesystem UUIDs that have already been seen. This is an effort to reduce clutter from such partitions that are components of RAID 1 arrays. The install.sh script now attempts to locate and mount an unmounted ESP when run under Linux. Finally, I've fixed a bug in both install.sh and mkrlconf.sh that caused the generated refind_linux.conf file to contain a stray line break and unnecessary PARTUUID= specification on some systems.
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0.7.6 (12/15/2013)—The biggest changes in this version relate to the default_selection setting. You can now provide multiple default selections by listing them within quotes and separated by commas, as in default_selection "ubuntu,fedora" which boots ubuntu if it's present and fedora if ubuntu is not present but fedora is. This should be helpful with removable disks. You can also include two times, in 24-hour format, following a default_selection specification, as in default_selection Maintenance 1:00 2:00, which boots Maintenance by default between 1:00 and 2:00. If another default_selection without a time specification preceded this line, the earlier one will still apply at other times. Another change to the main program is that you can now set screensaver -1 to have rEFInd come up with its screen blanked. You'll probably want to combine this with a short timeout value to have rEFInd boot your default OS quickly unless you press a key first. Finally, I've added a new option to the install.sh script: --ownhfs target_partition. This option is valid only under OS X. It installs rEFInd to an HFS+ volume that does not currently hold an OS X installation. The installation method differs from the usual rEFInd installation in that the result looks to the firmware more like an OS X installation. This makes rEFInd appear as an option in the firmware's own boot manager and it may help suspend-to-RAM operations.
0.7.5 (11/10/2013)—This version fixes a few bugs, the most important of which is one that caused some Macs to hang when multiple EFI drivers were present. Another squashed bug caused the screen to clear to the default gray rather than the actual background color when launching OSes in graphics mode. rEFInd no longer shows all exFAT partitions as being bootable on Macs when legacy boot options are enabled; now such partitions only show up as bootable if rEFInd spots a known boot loader installed on them. Finally, I've fixed a bug that caused install.sh to fail when installing to the ESP with recent versions of OS X.