rEFId (feature request)

[sgoodman]

Only one version of rEFId works for me, all subsequent installs simply hand and fail. I’ve gotten myself to the point where I simply save all my *.efi from the ipxe directory then copy back after a new installation fails to correct the issue.

I am 100% HP clients and this behaviors is identical between various generations (G2-G6 all seem to want this old version to boot).

Any way to:

1: Have a working version
2: If not #1 - at least preserve old *.efi files
3: Is there a magic refind.conf parameter I need to set?

?

[george1421]

Lets get a little clarity around what you are asking. What version of refind do you need to do X and what version to do Y?

refind is only used for ufei systems exiting from the FOG iPXE menu. Its not used at any other times. The refind.conf file would be configured to look in more places for the efi boot loader. Do you know the specific error messages you are seeing? What is refind not doing that you need it to.

[sgoodman]

-rw-r–r-- 1 fogproject apache 205192 Oct 28 10:49 refind.efi

I don’t know how to retrieve the version.

When I use the above version, everything exits properly (we are 100% UEFI /netboot IPv4 with Legacy Disabled). When it boots from disk the “blue line” atop the screen appears, some misc text and then windows boots from disk. When I use any other version the “blue line” appears and then it hangs - has a message with respect to initializing/loading then hangs.

Every reinstallation of FOG (updates. etc…) seems to remove the service/ipxe directory and reinstall all components. It always fails to boot the PC correctly so I copy the above version and it works again.

[george1421]

@sgoodman said in rEFId (feature request):

When I use any other version the “blue line” appears and then it hangs - has a message with respect to initializing/loading then hangs.

Hmm all I can tell is by the file size its not the same version as I have with 1.5.7. If you are at the blue line, if you hit esc or arrow keys does it give you a console or something where we can pick up the version?

I can’t really help you get the exact version since you are not using the version that came with a specific release. BUT I can give you a direction if you want to do a little leg work that we find the working version for you.

With the FOG 1.5.0 release FOG shipped refind version 0.11.0 I see from the sourceforge site that 0.11.4 was recently released (note: fogproject doesn’t compile these binaries, but use them untouched from the FOSS author). I can tell you its probably not 0.11.4, so if you want to download one by one 0.11.0 to 0.11.3 and try them to see if you can find the one with the blue line. Also I would try 0.11.4 to see if the latest version works. All you need is the refind.efi file from the zip file and place it into the ipxe directory on the fog server.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/

If you find that the later releases work the best (with supporting users testing) its possible that we can get that version of refind into 1.5.8 release that is scheduled to be released winter 2019, but no promises.

[Sebastian Roth]

@sgoodman Just found this topic. Must have lost it somehow.

Looking through the history of changes on github for refind.efi I would think that the file you refer to (size 205192 byte) most probably is the one from July 2016 - md5 hash sum is c771cd5a7d01cd7c34ed81ce4efa7aed. I just booted a UEFI VM using that binary and found that it’s version 0.9.1. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a better way of getting the version info.

This binary is really really old and I am wondering why all the newer ones would fail on your HP machines. Can you please be more specific on what exactly happens when you boot clients with newer versions of rEFInd?

[Sebastian Roth]

@sgoodman Need more information in this!

[Sebastian Roth]

@sgoodman Bump…