Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-11/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.7
+8/2/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.9.0
-
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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!
You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:
+
You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:
A
- source code zip file—This is useful if you want to
- compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the TianoCore EFI
- Development Kit 2 (EDK2) to build my binaries (below), although the
- GNU-EFI
- development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
- toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
- possible, but I've not attempted it.
+ href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd page. Some users of Arch
+ Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
+ with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a variant
+ package exists in which the x86-64 binary was compiled with
+ GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
+ users with this problem.
+
+
A
+ binary RPM file—If you use an RPM-based x86-64
+ Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
+ package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
+ equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the install.sh
+ script (described on the Installing
+ rEFInd page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
+ maintainers can examine the refind.spec file in the source
+ package and tweak it to their needs. The source
+ RPM file might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
+ on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
+ files.
+
+
A
+ binary Debian package—If you use an x86-64 version
+ of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
+ install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
+ package using alien. Note that an Ubuntu
+ PPA is available, which may install more smoothly and will cause
+ rEFInd to automatically update with other packages.
-
Tip: If you want a bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 ESP, and then use the install.sh program's --usedefault option, as in bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1 to install to the first partition on /dev/sdd. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.
+
Note: At the moment, neither the bootable CD-R image file nor the bootable USB flash drive image file supports booting with Secure Boot active. The x86-64 version of the ALT Linux Rescue disc uses a Secure Boot-enabled rEFInd, though, so you may find that useful in some situations.
A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.9.0/refind-cd-0.9.0.zip/download">A
CD-R image file—This download contains the same files as
the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
(and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
@@ -148,6 +207,31 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
shell.
+
Tip: If you want to make your own bootable USB
+flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB
+flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the install.sh
+program's --usedefault option, and perhaps the
+--alldrivers option, as in bash install.sh
+--usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers to install to the first partition
+on /dev/sdd. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted
+computer.
+
+
A
+ USB flash drive image file—Although you can create
+ your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
+ this version and copy it to your USB drive with dd or some
+ other low-level disk copying utility.
Source code via
git—If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
@@ -170,41 +254,59 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
+
Ubuntu—Although an official Ubuntu
+ package isn't available, I've created a rEFInd PPA
+ for Ubuntu. To use it, open a Terminal window and type sudo apt-add-repository ppa:rodsmith/refind,
+ then sudo apt-get update. You can then type
+ sudo apt-get install refind to install the
+ package. Thereafter, the rEFInd version will update along with your
+ other software. This package is built with GNU-EFI and is not signed
+ with a Secure Boot key; however, the install script (which launches
+ automatically when you install the package) should sign the binary with
+ a locally-generated key if it detects that your system uses Secure
+ Boot. Thus, if you've previously installed one of my binaries on a
+ Secure Boot system and added its key as a MOK, you'll have to add your
+ local key when you reboot.
+
Arch Linux—You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
- repositories, in both stable
- and git
- (experimental) releases. The git release is likely to include
+ repositories, in both a stable version (the refind-efi package
+ installable via pacman) and an experimental release built from
+ rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
+ name refind-efi-git. The git release is likely to include
pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
- poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
- Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
- UEFI-based PCs.
+ poorly tested or undocumented.
+
+
ALT Linux—This RPM-based distribution is experimenting
+ with using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT
+ developers haven't yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a
+ tricky and delicate task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image),
+ but they're working on the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see this
+ page for details.
+
+
Slackware—As far as I know, an official rEFInd package is
+ not available as part of Slackware; however, a Slackware
+ package from SlackBuilds is available.
+
+
Fat
+ Dog—This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
+ rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
+ provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.
The Nix Packages
collection—This site creates packages for a number of
OSes using its own packaging system.
-
OpenSUSE
- Build Service (OBS)—This site holds a binary x86-64 build
- of rEFInd that should install on any RPM-based distribution. It doesn't
- completely set up rEFInd, though; it just places the rEFInd files in
- the /usr/share/refind directory, and a copy of
- install.sh as /usr/sbin/refind_install.
- Unfortunately, the script makes assumptions about the locations of
- files and so is useless when files are moved around in this way. Thus,
- you'll need to install manually after installing this RPM, so you might
- as well download the rEFInd binary .zip file from Sourceforge
- instead.
-
To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to drop me a line.