RefindPlus

Overview

RefindPlus is a variant of the rEFInd Boot Manager incorporating various fixes and additional features.

The main development focus is on the following units:

• MacPro3,1: Early 2008 Mac Pro
• MacPro4,1: Early 2009 Mac Pro
• MacPro5,1: Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pros
• Xserve2,1: Early 2008 Xserve
• Xserve3,1: Early 2009 Xserve

However, the enhancements and fixes added to RefindPlus are not limited in scope to those units and include several other Apple Mac as well as multiple UEFI-PC related items that may be of interest to anyone requiring a capable and flexible boot manager.

Headline Features

• Maintains feature and configuration parity with the base upstream version.
• Protects against damage to Mac nvRAM when booting UEFI Windows.
• Provides Pre-Boot Configuration Screen on units running GPUs without native EFI on Macs.
• Provides UGADraw on modern GOP based GPUs to permit booting legacy EFI Boot operating systems.
• Provides improved support for languages that use unicode text
• Emulates UEFI 2.x on EFI 1.x units to permit running UEFI 2.x utilities on such units
• Adds a debug (DBG) binary that provides extensive logging.
  • The release (REL) binary is an optimised build for day to day use.
• Fixes upstream inability to print to screen on Macs
  • This prevented receiving program messages as well as leveraging advanced features such as EFI shell.
• Provides NVMe capability, if required, via an inbuilt NvmExpress driver.
  • Removes the need to add NVMe drivers on units without NVMe support.
  • Basically allows working as if NVMe is natively supported by the firmware
    • Removes the need for a risky firmware flash operation on units such as the MacPro3,1
• Provides APFS filesystem capability, if required, via an inbuilt APFS JumpStart driver.
  • Removes the need to add APFS drivers to run recent macOS releases on units without APFS support.
  • Additionally, this ensures that matching APFS drivers for specific macOS releases are used.
  • Basically allows working as if APFS is natively supported by the firmware
    • Removes the need for a risky firmware flash operation on units such as the MacPro3,1
• Fully supports Apple's APFS filesystem requirements
  • This allows booting macOS 11.x (Big Sur) or later from single named volumes on the main screen.
    • As opposed to generic and difficult to distinguish PreBoot volumes.
    • Avoids potentially compromising system integrity by otherwise requiring SIP to be disabled.
  • This also allows booting FileVault encrypted volumes from single named volumes on the main screen.
    • As opposed to generic and difficult to distinguish PreBoot volumes.

Installation

MyBootMgr is recommended to automate installing RefindPlus on macOS. Alternatively, as the RefindPlus efi file can function as a drop-in replacement for the upstream efi file, the rEFInd package can be installed first and its efi file replaced with the RefindPlus efi file. (Ensure the RefindPlus efi file is renamed to match). This manual process allows installing RefindPlus on other operating systems supported upstream. On macOS, MyBootMgr can optionally be used to set a RefindPlus|OpenCore chain-loading arrangement up on MacPro3,1 to MacPro5,1 as well as on Xserve2,1 and Xserve3,1.

Users may also want to replace upstream filesystem drivers with those packaged with RefindPlus as these are always either exactly the same as upstream versions or have had fixes applied.

RefindPlus will function with the upstream configuration file, refind.conf, but users may wish to replace this with the RefindPlus configuration file, config.conf, to configure the additional options provided by RefindPlus. A sample RefindPlus configuration file is available here: config.conf-sample. RefindPlus-Specific options can also be added to a refind.conf file and used that way if preferred.

Note that if RefindPlus is run without activating the additional options, as will be the case if using an unmodified upstream configuration file, a RefindPlus run will be equivalent to running the upstream version it is based on, currently v0.14.0. That is, the additional options provided in RefindPlus must be actively enabled if they are required. This equivalence is subject to a few divergent items in RefindPlus as outlined under the Divergence section below. NB: Upstream post-release code updates are typically ported to RefindPlus as they happen and as such, RefindPlus releases are actually at the state of the base upstream release version plus any such updates and typically include updates for subsequent upstream release versions since the base version.

Additional Functionality

RefindPlus-Specific funtionality can be configured by adding the tokens below to the upstream configuration file. Additional information is provided in the sample RefindPlus configuration file.

Modified Functionality

In addition to the new functionality listed above, the following upstream tokens have been modified:

• "use_graphics_for" Token: OpenCore and Clover added as options that can be set to boot in graphics mode.
• "showtools" Token: Additional tool added:
  • clean_nvram : Allows resetting nvram directly from RefindPlus.
    • When run on Apple Firmware, RefindPlus will additionally trigger nvRAM garbage collection
• "csr_values" Token: A value of 0 can be set as the Enabled value to ensure Over The Air (OTA) updates from Apple when running macOS 11.x (Big Sur), or later, with SIP enabled.
  • This is equivalent to activating the csr_normalise token.
• "timeout" Token: The default is no timeout unless explicitly set.
• "screensaver" Token: The RefindPlus screensaver cycles through a set of colours as opposed to a single grey colour.
• "use_nvram" Token: RefindPlus variables are written to the file system and not the motherboard's nvRAM unless explicitly set to do so by activating this configuration token.
• "log_level" Token: Controls the native log format and an implementation of the upstream format.
  • Only active on DEBUG and NOOPT builds while RELEASE builds remain optimised for day-to-day use.
  • Level 0 does not switch logging off but activates the native summary format.
  • Levels 1 and 2 output logs similar to the detailed upstream format.
    • Level 1 is broadly equivalent to upstream Level 4 (upstream Levels 1 to 3 were dispensed with)
    • Level 2 is only exposed on NOOPT builds and outputs logs at a very detailed level
      • Create NOOPT builds by passing ALL as a second parameter to the RefindPlus build script
      • The first parameter is the build branch, which also needs to be specified in such instances
    • When Level 2 is not exposed, selected levels above 1 will be capped at Level 1
    • When exposed, selected levels above 2 will be capped at Level 2
• "resolution" Token: The max setting is redundant in RefindPlus which always defaults to the maximum available resolution whenever the resolution is not set or is otherwise not available.

Divergence

Significant visible implementation differences vis-a-vis the upstream base are:

• GZipped Loaders: RefindPlus only provides stub support for handling GZipped loaders as this is largely only relevant for units on the ARM architecture. This stub support is only used for debug logging in RefindPlus and can be activated using the same support_gzipped_loaders configuration token as upstream.
• Screenshots: These are saved in the PNG format with a significantly smaller file size. Additionally, the file naming is slightly different and the files are always saved to the same ESP as the RefindPlus efi file.
• UI Flags: RefindPlus requires that any desired previously set hideui configuration token options are explicitly defined in supplementary/theme configuration files; as whenever the token is found in such files, the token setting is reset by RefindPlus to the specified option(s). This is consistent with how other configuration tokens in such files are handled. The upstream implementation effectively adds new settings to any previously existing ones for this configuration token instead.
• UI Scaling: WQHD monitors are correctly determined not to be HiDPI monitors and UI elements are not scaled up on such monitors when the RefindPlus-Specific scale_ui configuration token is set to automatically detect the screen resolution. RefindPlus also takes vertically orientated screens into account and additionally scales UI elements down when low resolution screens (less than 1025px on the longest edge) are detected.
• Loader Icons: RefindPlus defaults to preferring generic icons for loaders ahead of custom icons where possible. The upstream icon search implementation involves only loading such icons after a search for custom icons has not turned anything up. Users can activate the RefindPlus-Specific decline_help_icon configuration token to use the upstream icon search implementation instead of the RefindPlus default.
• GOP Driver Provision: RefindPlus attempts to ensure that UEFI 2.x GOP drivers are available on EFI 1.x units by attempting to reload such drivers when it detects an absence of GOP on such units to permit the use of modern GPUs on legacy units. Users that prefer not to use this feature can activate the RefindPlus-Specific disable_reload_gop configuration token to switch it off.
• AppleFramebuffer Provision: RefindPlus defaults to always providing Apple framebuffers on Macs, when not available under certain circumstances. This is done using an inbuilt SetAppleFB feature. Users that prefer not to use this feature can activate the RefindPlus-Specific disable_set_applefb configuration token to switch it off.
• APFS Filesystem Provision: RefindPlus defaults to always providing APFS Filesystem capability, when not available but is required, without a need to load an APFS driver. This is done using an inbuilt SupplyAPFS feature. Users that prefer not to use this feature can activate the RefindPlus-Specific disable_apfs_load configuration token to switch it off.
• APFS PreBoot Volumes: RefindPlus always synchronises APFS System and PreBoot partitions transparently such that the Preboot partitions of APFS volumes are always used to boot APFS formatted macOS. Hence, a single option for booting macOS on APFS volumes is presented in RefindPlus to provide maximum APFS compatibility, consistent with Apple's implementation. Users that prefer not to use this feature can activate the RefindPlus-Specific disable_apfs_sync configuration token to switch it off.
• Apple nvRAM Protection: RefindPlus always prevents UEFI Windows Secure Boot from saving certificates to Apple nvRAM as this can result in damage and an inability to boot. Blocking these certificates does not impact the operation of UEFI Windows on Apple Macs. This filtering only happens when Apple firmware is detected and is not applied to other types of firmware. Users that prefer not to use this feature can activate the RefindPlus-Specific disable_nvram_protect configuration token to switch it off.
• Secondary Configuration Files: While the upstream documentation prohibits including tertiary configuration files from secondary configuration files, there is no mechanism enforcing this prohibition. Hence, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and more, configuration files can in fact be included. RefindPlus enforces a limitation to secondary configuration files.
• Disabled Manual Stanzas: The processing of a user configured boot stanza is halted, and the Entry object immediately discarded, once a Disabled setting is encountered. The outcome is the same as upstream, which always continues to create and return a fully built object in such cases to be discarded later. The approach adopted in RefindPlus allows for an optimised loading process particularly when such Disabled tokens are placed immediately after the menuentry line (see examples in the config.conf-sample file). This also applies to submenuentry items which can be enabled or disabled separately.
• Pointer Device Priority: The upstream implementation of pointer device priority is based on how the enable_mouse and enable_touch pointer device control tokens appear in the configuration file(s) when both are active. The last pointer device control token read in the main configuration file and/or any supplementary/override configuration file will be used and the other disregarded. In RefindPlus however, enable_touch always takes priority when both tokens are active without regard to the order of appearance in the configuration file(s). This means that to use a mouse in RefindPlus, enable_touch must be disabled (default) in addition to enabling enable_mouse.

Roll Your Own

Refer to BUILDING.md for build instructions (x86_64 Only).

CLICK HERE for the ReadMe File related to the current (work in progress) code base.