X-Git-Url: https://code.delx.au/refind/blobdiff_plain/fe53e20674a0f3dff46aa42d5676a5304dac92bf..119f040f3c096ef2ab59f5d02059e9d872047dcd:/docs/refind/todo.html
diff --git a/docs/refind/todo.html b/docs/refind/todo.html
index 582de71..4be866e 100644
--- a/docs/refind/todo.html
+++ b/docs/refind/todo.html
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-6/21/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.3
+1/8/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.4
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!
@@ -131,6 +131,14 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
+ - The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
+ icons.
+
- Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for x86
or x86-64 systems and displays this information in its
"About" screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd
@@ -157,6 +165,13 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
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, or add a filesystem type
+ identifier to the size.
+
- 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,
@@ -181,14 +196,6 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
- - I'd like to find a way to get rEFInd to launch BIOS boot loaders on
- UEFI-based systems. This option currently works only on
- Macs—or at least, I've not gotten it to work on any of my
- UEFI-based PCs. (I've done some experiments to try to get this to
- work, but so far without success. If you'd like to help on this, e-mail me for my
- thoughts.)
-
- The Gigabyte
Hybrid EFI has a bug that causes the allegedly case-insensitive
StriCmp() function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
@@ -207,7 +214,7 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
implementation, and a dismal one at that, so I'm inclined to just
let it go.
- - The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on UEFI-based
+
- The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
fixed.
@@ -231,10 +238,12 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
shell's pathname but not the device identifier.
- - The 32-bit build of rEFInd displays corrupted volume labels for
- filesystems handled by built-in drivers, but not for the drivers
- provided with rEFInd. This is presumably related to the 32-bit
- driver bug noted below.
+ - When specifying a volume by name in dont_scan_dirs,
+ slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
+ in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
+ volume by name if it includes a slash (as in Fedora
+ /boot). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
+ and to use a filesystem number rather than a volume label.
- The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
similar problems.
@@ -262,25 +271,28 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
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.
+ boot options and then save them to the refind.conf file.
+ One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
+ stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
+ boot loader file.
+
+ - 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
+ the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
+ and in recovering from boot problems.
+
+ - An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful.
+ A simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
+ requires access to the bcfg command, this would work
+ only from a version 2 shell or if bcfg were implemented
+ as a standalone program. Another alternative would be a program
+ written in C.
- It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot
loader settings—say, to disable one specific boot loader or
change its icon.
- - A way to read boot options set via efibootmgr,
- bless, or similar options from NVRAM to add to the boot
- set would be useful.
-
- - A way to examine and change the NVRAM settings could be useful.
- This would enable a CD-based boot of rEFInd to fix a broken disk
- boot. Perhaps this could be done via a separate tool that could be
- launched much like the shell or gptsync.
-
- - I'd like to give the user the ability to set custom options on a
- single-boot basis, similar to what's possible in GRUB.
-
- A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
purposes.
@@ -294,18 +306,13 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
- Improvements to the EFI drivers:
+Improvements to the EFI drivers:
- - The 32-bit versions of the drivers return filesystem labels that
- omit the first two characters of the name. If the name is shorter
- than two characters, the driver may return the wrong volume's
- label. The 64-bit builds seem to be unaffected by this bug.
-
- - Drivers for additional filesystems are required. Given the recent
- shift to ext4fs, that should be the priority; however, other Linux
- filesystems, UDF, and perhaps others would all be welcome
+
- 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.
@@ -317,19 +324,28 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/">DUET). Nonetheless,
I'd like to track down the cause and fix it.
- The driver installation procedure could be improved, perhaps by
- adding support for drivers to the install.sh script.
-
The HFS+ driver returns a volume label of "HFS+ volume", no matter
what the volume's real label is.
+ 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
+ desirable.
+
+ When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
+ one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
+ not have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
+ computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
+ This is not relevant if you're using my binary package,
+ since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
+ that way don't exhibit this bug.
+
-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.