rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

graysky · 2013-10-27 21:02:42

Been playing with rEFInd recently and am amazed by it's 'scan_all_linux_kernels' option which I have enabled. Is there a way I can see the resulting refind.conf that the autoscan genereated? I'd like to see disable autoscanning and code out /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf manually but since it did all the work for me, seeing that file that was autogenerated would be ideal.

Thanks!

Last edited by graysky (2013-10-27 21:47:46)

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-27 21:10:35

graysky wrote:

Been playing with rEFInd recently and am amazed by it's 'scan_all_linux_kernels' option which I have enabled. Is there a way I can see the resulting refind.conf that the autoscan genereated? I'd like to see disable autoscanning and code out /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf manually but since it did all the work for me, seeing that file that was autogenerated would be ideal.
Thanks!

The autoscan feature does not generate refind.conf. Instead refind crawls all subdirs in <EFISYS>/EFI/* and /* and /boot/* (not sure about last one) and if it detects any linux kernel along with a refind_linux.conf (for parameters), then it shows them in the menu. Better to ask Rod Smith aka srs5694 in our forums as he is the upstream author of rEFInd.

EDIT: This is done at runtime, on-the-fly.

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-28 09:39:15)

srs5694 · 2013-10-28 00:17:10

The.ridiculus.rat is mostly correct; rEFInd scans the directories he specified (along with the locations for the OS X and Windows boot loaders) and builds a boot list internally, but this boot list is not in a format that's exactly equivalent to the refind.conf file, so there's no way to extract an exactly-equivalent file. I suppose an option to do so could be added to rEFInd, but it would take some effort to do the "translation."

When scanning kernels, a refind_linux.conf file is helpful, but not required for rEFInd to display a kernel as a bootable option. The purpose of that file is to hold kernel options, which for the most part are unguessable. In the absence of refind_linux.conf, though, rEFInd does search for /etc/fstab on the kernel's partition and read the root partition's identifier from there and pass it to the kernel. This enables rEFInd to boot certain common configurations (such as a default setup of Ubuntu) without a refind_linux.conf file. This can enable rEFInd to work something like Super GRUB Disk on some systems. Unfortunately, using /etc/fstab in this way doesn't do any good if you've got a separate /boot partition (unless you copy /etc/fstab to /boot/etc/fstab), so it's not universally usable. You can manually enter boot options by hitting F2 or Insert twice, but of course you'll need to know the values of whatever options you intend to add.

graysky · 2013-10-28 08:54:34

Very nice discussion, thank you. Is it possible to boot to a media-bound ISO with rEFInd? For example, I put the latest Arch ISO on /dev/sdb2 under /files/iso ... any way to boot directly to it?

srs5694 · 2013-10-28 13:41:04

graysky wrote:

Very nice discussion, thank you. Is it possible to boot to a media-bound ISO with rEFInd? For example, I put the latest Arch ISO on /dev/sdb2 under /files/iso ... any way to boot directly to it?

Not presently. That would require a loopback driver to mount the image file as a filesystem. I'd like to eventually write such a driver myself, but I have no timetable for doing so.

graysky · 2013-10-28 19:28:19

Cool, thanks for the info.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-27 21:02:42

rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

#2 2013-10-27 21:10:35

Re: rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

#3 2013-10-28 00:17:10

Re: rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

#4 2013-10-28 08:54:34

Re: rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

#5 2013-10-28 13:41:04

Re: rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

#6 2013-10-28 19:28:19

Re: rEFInd's autoscan feature... can I see its reifnd.conf [solved]

Board footer