I know that rEFInd is themeable, but the some of the default theme's icons are looking a bit dated, particularly the Mac icon. Is there any way for rEFInd to establish which version of the OS is installed and perhaps have different icons for different versions, so that Win 8 and Win 7 can have their respective version logos and depending on the age of the OS X installation, there can be separate icons for those too?
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That's doable with Mac OS if it's not located on a raid or encrypted volume. For Win 8 and Win 7 you would need to install the NTFS.efi driver for rEFInd to be able to examine the file system. The best way to solve this problem, is to add stanza support for legacy boot partitions and also add override type stanzas.
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Determining the version of an installed OS would involve reading the boot loader code and looking for some unique detail in it (say, computing a checksum and comparing that to stored values). This might work in some cases, but not in all cases -- Microsoft, for instance, doesn't change its BIOS-mode boot loader with every Windows revision, so there'd be some ambiguity there. Overall, it seems like a pain to maintain a database that would inevitably be in constant flux, so I'd rather not go there.
If it's important enough to you personally, it's fairly easily done for OS X by setting custom icons for each partition or boot loader, as described in this section of the documentation. Distinguishing between different BIOS-based versions of Windows would be trickier, although you could apply the same techniques to EFI-mode Windows installations.
Personally, I lack much in the way of artistic talent, so I'm not going to create new icons myself. If you'd like to submit some, please feel free to do so; but I can only accept icons that are distributed under a suitable open source license, so please don't simply grab something off the Microsoft or Apple Web site and send it to me.
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After an update of rEFInd (to 11.4) I am finding that although the previously-existing icons file had been carefully saved in icons-backup, the newly-added icons directory is missing the 2 home-made icons I had added, so that I then had to manually copy them back into icons from the backup.
It would help if that could be automated, e.g. a separate "icons.local" directory containing such home-made icons that a rEFInd update could automically copy into the any new icons directory.
Also, I am puzzled that there is an 'icons-newly installed' directory as well as a new 'icons' directory...
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Maurice, rEFInd already provides a mechanism to do what you want, although it's inactive by default. To use it, edit the refind.conf file: Uncomment or add the icons_dir line, set it to something appropriate, and store your custom, override, or theme icons in the directory you specify. This directory won't be touched by rEFInd updates, so they're safe from changes. If you want to have just a few custom icons and rely on the defaults for the rest, you can put just your new or changed icons in your icons_dir; rEFInd will fall back to its default icons subdirectory if it can't find icons in the location you specify, so the defaults remain available, and will change if they change with updates to rEFInd.
The refind.conf file has some more instructions on this, and the rEFInd themes documentation goes into even more detail.
There is no standard rEFInd icons directory called icons-newly installed. If you're referring to the distinction between icons and icons-backup, that exists so that, if users put their custom icons in the default location, as you said you did, those icons won't be completely wiped out by a rEFInd update, while still permitting that update to include new icons.
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P.S. I needed to create my own boot menu icons because I have two levels of Mageia installed, so needed to prevent the boot menu using the same icon for both!
Iit was also very useful to be able to select the icon for each according to the device label on the two root partitions.
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I know that rEFInd is themeable, but the some of the default theme's icons are looking a bit dated, particularly the Mac icon. Is there any way for rEFInd to establish which version of the OS is installed and perhaps have different icons for different versions, so that Win 8 and Win 7 can have their respective version logos and depending on the age of the OS X installation, there can be separate icons for those too?
That's doable with Mac OS if it's not located on a raid or encrypted volume. For Win 8 and Win 7 you would need to install the NTFS.efi driver for rEFInd to be able to examine the file system. The best way to solve this problem, is to add stanza support for legacy boot partitions and also add override type stanzas.
Determining the version of an installed OS would involve reading the boot loader code and looking for some unique detail in it (say, computing a checksum and comparing that to stored values). This might work in some cases, but not in all cases -- Microsoft, for instance, doesn't change its BIOS-mode boot loader with every Windows revision, so there'd be some ambiguity there. Overall, it seems like a pain to maintain a database that would inevitably be in constant flux, so I'd rather not go there.
If it's important enough to you personally, it's fairly easily done for OS X by setting custom icons for each partition or boot loader, as described in this section of the documentation. Distinguishing between different BIOS-based versions of Windows would be trickier, although you could apply the same techniques to EFI-mode Windows installations.
Personally, I lack much in the way of artistic talent, so I'm not going to create new icons myself. If you'd like to submit some, please feel free to do so; but I can only accept icons that are distributed under a suitable open source license, so please don't simply grab something off the Microsoft or Apple Web site and send it to me.
After an update of rEFInd (to 11.4) I am finding that although the previously-existing icons file had been carefully saved in icons-backup, the newly-added icons directory is missing the 2 home-made icons I had added, so that I then had to manually copy them back into icons from the backup.
It would help if that could be automated, e.g. a separate "icons.local" directory containing such home-made icons that a rEFInd update could automically copy into the any new icons directory.
Maurice, rEFInd already provides a mechanism to do what you want, although it's inactive by default. To use it, edit the
refind.conffile: Uncomment or add theicons_dirline, set it to something appropriate, and store your custom, override, or theme icons in the directory you specify. This directory won't be touched by rEFInd updates, so they're safe from changes. If you want to have just a few custom icons and rely on the defaults for the rest, you can put just your new or changed icons in youricons_dir; rEFInd will fall back to its defaulticonssubdirectory if it can't find icons in the location you specify, so the defaults remain available, and will change if they change with updates to rEFInd.The
refind.conffile has some more instructions on this, and the rEFInd themes documentation goes into even more detail.There is no standard rEFInd icons directory called
icons-newly installed. If you're referring to the distinction betweeniconsandicons-backup, that exists so that, if users put their custom icons in the default location, as you said you did, those icons won't be completely wiped out by a rEFInd update, while still permitting that update to include new icons.I should have known rEFInd would provide for the 'own icons' situation! Thank you....
(W.r.t the ' icons-newly installed' directory I reported, I now know where that came from and have deleted it.)
P.S. I needed to create my own boot menu icons because I have two levels of Mageia installed, so needed to prevent the boot menu using the same icon for both!
Iit was also very useful to be able to select the icon for each according to the device label on the two root partitions.