X-Git-Url: https://code.delx.au/refind/blobdiff_plain/c6381afaa9463643273b4527c64d26ff7415b7e8..b1ba9f9e7edcf78bb9bfeb5451bff0ecf1752f90:/docs/refind/todo.html
diff --git a/docs/refind/todo.html b/docs/refind/todo.html
index 2ab1637..20c52a1 100644
--- a/docs/refind/todo.html
+++ b/docs/refind/todo.html
@@ -15,10 +15,10 @@
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-6/18/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.12
+12/8/2014, referencing rEFInd 0.8.4
-I'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!
+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!
@@ -177,10 +177,10 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
way to test such changes.
- Although the ICNS file format used by rEFInd supports multiple
- image sizes, if a size that rEFInd needs isn't present in the file,
- rEFInd can't use the icon. The ability to scale images to the
- desired size would be useful.
+ Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
+ extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
+ so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
+ x86-64.
A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.
@@ -190,36 +190,26 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
monospace fonts.
- I would like to be able to specify the volume on which a boot
- loader resides using a partition GUID value, but extracting a GUID
- from the partition data is harder than extracting the volume's
- label or counting up the filesystem numbers.
-
- Currently, if a filesystem's label comes up empty, rEFInd
- substitutes the size, so you get displays like boot
- EFI\foo\bar.efi from 90 GiB volume. I'd like to add more
- checks to substitute the GPT partition label if the
- filesystem label comes up empty.
-
- The default_selection option in refind.conf could
- be improved by supporting a list of default options, so that if the
- first item isn't found, rEFInd will try to boot the second one in
- the list, and so on. This could be handy in case a driver fails to
- load, or to provide an override in case the user inserts a specific
- removable disk—by placing the removable disk's name first in
- the list, it will take precedence over the normal hard disk
- default.
-
- Along the lines of the previous item, the
- default_selection might be expanded to support some form
- of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
+ The default_selection might be expanded to support some
+ form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.
It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).
-
+ Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
+ information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
+ upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
+ transparent background is desirable to some users.
+
+ When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
+ rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
+ OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
+ single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
+ support files.
+
+
Known bugs that need squashing:
@@ -228,10 +218,10 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware
- that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't know
- how to fix the problem at the moment, though; I need both
- documentation and access to an afflicted computer to do the
- necessary work, and I have neither.
+ that are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have
+ a definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
+ removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
+ remission.
The Gigabyte
Hybrid EFI has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
@@ -295,10 +285,27 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
similar problems.
- If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array, rEFInd will detect
- kernels or boot loaders in RAID 1 twice. This could be fixed by
- adding a check for duplicate filesystem UUIDs to the
- partition-scanning code.
+ If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+,
+ or FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in
+ RAID 1 twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS
+ already exist; these checks could be expanded to block such
+ duplication with more filesystems.
+
+ Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
+ when rEFInd is installed. Unfortunately, I lack the hardware to
+ test and experiment with this (my only Intel-based Mac doesn't
+ exhibit this problem), so I can't fix this myself. Using
+ pmset to disable the autopoweroff option is
+ claimed
+ by some to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using
+ the --ownhfs installation option may also help in some
+ cases.
+
+ If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
+ multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
+ boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.
@@ -306,9 +313,6 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
- - EFI supports network boots. rEFInd doesn't, but it would be nice if
- it would.
-
- There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
can see how it could be for some people.
@@ -328,6 +332,17 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
boot loader file.
+ - Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
+ detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
+ them, so that they can be modified manually.
+
+ - 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
+ to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
+ disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
+ cards.
+
- I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
information utility—something to tell you about your hard
disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
@@ -359,22 +374,12 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
- - Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Given the talk of
- shifting to Btrfs, that should be the priority; however, other
- Linux filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
- additions. Also along these lines, adding drivers for Linux LVM and
- RAID setups would be useful, too.
-
- - As detailed on the drivers page, there
- are performance issues with the drivers on some systems. I suspect
- that most "real" computers aren't greatly affected (in my tests,
- the problem is worst with VirtualBox, and the next worst is a
- system that uses DUET). Nonetheless,
- I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.
-
- - The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
- what the volume's real label is.
+ - Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
+ are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
+ welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
+ BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
+ Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
+ for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.
- This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
@@ -390,11 +395,37 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
+- Improvements to gptsync, install.sh, or other
+ support tools:
+
+
+
+ - The gptsync program can return misleading error codes
+ 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
+ makes it useless on those networks.
+
+ - A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.
+
+
+
-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.