rEFInd does not use the refind.conf file

[Ceel]

Hello,

I try to run an ISO in a VM (Qemu, EFI 32bit). rEFInd finds all the bootloaders in it but doesn't use its refind.conf
In a first time, I thought it was because rEFInd switched in text mode (I didn't copy the icons folder in the /efi repertory).
But even in graphic mode rEFInd does not read its config file (and doesn't display any icons too, only yellow and black striped squares if my memory serves me good). I can select the bootloaders that appear in the menu and launch them, but the timeout is always 20 sec and my entries in the config file are ignored.
I tried copying refind.conf in various places, creating a refind dir in /efi with a refind.conf in it... and so on. Nothing to do. :(

I've alreaby installed rEFInd on a computer for a dual boot Windows/debian and use it also from a USB stick; both work without any problem. I really don't understand what happens... Any idea ?

(I've tested with rEFInd 0.11.0 then 0.11.2, in 32bit and 64bit)
Tree in the ISO:
/efi/boot/bootia32.efi (= refindia32.efi) + refind.conf
/efi/boot/icons
/efi/grub/grubia32.efi + grub.cfg
/boot/bzImage + rootfs.gz

Thanks in advance.

[Ceel]

Found where my problem come from.
I downgraded the version of the tool I use to create ISOs and created a new one -> rEFInd boots as expected...

[Roderick W. Smith]

FWIW, the complete lack of icons suggests that rEFInd was unable to read its home directory. I've seen this sort of thing before, in very early versions of rEFInd, because of buggy EFIs that were case-sensitive in their filename handling. (EFI is supposed to be case-insensitive.) I incorporated workarounds in rEFInd to help with this problem, but they mostly assume at least consistent case (e.g., .png or .PNG, but not .pNg).

When you say you "downgraded the version of the tool [you] use to create ISOs," do you mean a CD-burning utility that you used with the .iso file I provided, or do you mean you created your own .iso file? I'm guessing the latter, since you refer to modifying refind.conf. If so, it sounds like the El Torito FAT image was malformed, or at least that your specific EFI implementation didn't like the FAT image that the tool created. This is something you should probably report as a bug to the ISO-creation tool's authors.

[Ceel]

Thank you for your answer Roderick.

I always use lowercase, even under Windows; I don't think having mixed uppercase/lowercase but who knows? I will check this.

Yes, I was talking about the tool I use to generate ISOs files, not to burn them. I've reported my problems to the maintener but devs at SliTaz (my favorite distro) are not very verbose. However, I saw that there had been two updates since. I'm going to test it as soon as possible.