This question may well have been asked before, so apologies if so. I'm happy to be referred to any previous answer.
I have 5 OSs installed on my PC, and often want to work/play in several of these when away from home. I therefore need to be able to remotely select an OS to reboot into. Remotely accessing the computer via VNC and using grub-reboot permits this.
I much prefer rEFInd to GRUB. I'd love to be able to use a refind-reboot capability similar to grub-reboot. Does rEFInd currently permit doing this conveniently? If not, any chance I could successfully advocate for its addition? :-)
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I wrote a little program that works like grub-set-default nine years ago and posted the source to the refind forum. I haven't used refind for a long time, although I still follow the forum. Which means I haven't tested it it in years. But maybe it will solve your problem?
Thank you for both the response and the work on the program.
I don't think it will work for me remotely for one reason, which is that one of the OSs on the PC is Windows 11. Once that is set to default and I boot into Windows, how would I get out?
The nice thing about grub-reboot and not changing the default (edit: OK, I see that grub-reboot does change the default for a single reboot) is that it always goes back to the GRUB menu of the one default OS (in my case an Arch-based distro) before booting into the selected OS. I only have to keep track of one GRUB boot menu and never have to worry about getting stuck in a particular OS, including Windows. (There's also a little tray utility called grub-reboot-picker in that default OS, which permits remote GUI selection of the desired OS without having to recall positions in the GRUB boot menu.)
So at least for the user, it's all very simple and convenient. OTOH, I'm not a coder, so I have no idea how simple or difficult such a capability is to code.
Last edit: Jud Fink 2024-12-25
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I do the same as you describe. I don't use NVRAM because I've found it unreliable on some off-brand PCs, so I use the vars/ folder. On Windows in a Cmd Shell with Admin privileges, I do
This question may well have been asked before, so apologies if so. I'm happy to be referred to any previous answer.
I have 5 OSs installed on my PC, and often want to work/play in several of these when away from home. I therefore need to be able to remotely select an OS to reboot into. Remotely accessing the computer via VNC and using grub-reboot permits this.
I much prefer rEFInd to GRUB. I'd love to be able to use a refind-reboot capability similar to grub-reboot. Does rEFInd currently permit doing this conveniently? If not, any chance I could successfully advocate for its addition? :-)
I wrote a little program that works like grub-set-default nine years ago and posted the source to the refind forum. I haven't used refind for a long time, although I still follow the forum. Which means I haven't tested it it in years. But maybe it will solve your problem?
Here's my post:
https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/37046692/
Thank you for both the response and the work on the program.
I don't think it will work for me remotely for one reason, which is that one of the OSs on the PC is Windows 11. Once that is set to default and I boot into Windows, how would I get out?
The nice thing about grub-reboot and not changing the default (edit: OK, I see that grub-reboot does change the default for a single reboot) is that it always goes back to the GRUB menu of the one default OS (in my case an Arch-based distro) before booting into the selected OS. I only have to keep track of one GRUB boot menu and never have to worry about getting stuck in a particular OS, including Windows. (There's also a little tray utility called grub-reboot-picker in that default OS, which permits remote GUI selection of the desired OS without having to recall positions in the GRUB boot menu.)
So at least for the user, it's all very simple and convenient. OTOH, I'm not a coder, so I have no idea how simple or difficult such a capability is to code.
Last edit: Jud Fink 2024-12-25
I do the same as you describe. I don't use NVRAM because I've found it unreliable on some off-brand PCs, so I use the vars/ folder. On Windows in a Cmd Shell with Admin privileges, I do
Where PreviousBoot.linux I saved from previous boot into linux.
Between other boot options I use https://github.com/Kerrnel/Scripts/blob/main/refind-next-boot
Which does detect use of nvram and supports that as well - but then - Windows.
(I haven't rebooted from Windows enough to warrant writing something for it yet. Lately I boot the Windows partition with qemu instead.)