#239 rEFInd folder structure and Tools location
I was having problems trying to get rEFInd to show the Shell option. I had to look at the source code to find out that it needs to be at one of the following locations:
\EFI\tools\shell.efi
\EFI\tools\shellx64.efi
\shell.efi
\shellx64.efi
None of those matches how I have rEFInd installed on an HFS+ partition. Basically, I just copy the contents of the refind-bin-0.11.4 folder to the HFS plus partition so that my shell is located at:
/Volumes/rEFInd/refind/tools_x64/shellx64.efi
Shouldn't rEFInd be able to find tools using a relative path from itself, like it does to find the refind.conf file and icons and drivers or am I misunderstanding how those other files are found?
Is there documentation that describes the necessary file structure of rEFInd, including the tools folder(s)?
First, you've posted this to the rEFIt project, but you're obviously using rEFInd (rEFIt's successor project), not rEFIt. See the rEFInd project page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/
That said, rEFInd is not meant to be installed by dragging-and-dropping files the way you're doing it; you should be installing it by using the
refind-installscript or by following the manual installation instructions. rEFInd doesn't distribute a shell binary, except in the emergency images (CD-R and USB flash drive), and those are properly located in theEFI/toolsdirectory.Oh, sorry about that. I clicked the "list of active bugs" link at the top of http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/todo.html and didn't notice where I ended up.
The Manual Install instructions don't mention the Tools. Tools_x64 is copied by the
cp -r refindcommands to .../refind/tools_x64 just as drivers are copied to .../refind/drivers_x64. Tools specific instructions are given later in the "Installing Additonal Components" section of the page.I guess I just find it strange that tools_x64 doesn't behave like drivers_x64 even though they have the same location and similar naming convention. Is there a reason for this differing behavior?
Joe, if you install on HFS+ there is aspecific command to do so, but the tools work fine if I put them under \EFI\Tools\shell.efi in the root of the HFS+ partition where rEFInd resides. Note that this is not ESP (FAT32) folder, but just a regular folder in the root of the drive.
Yes, the paths I listed that work (such as \EFI\tools\shell.efi) are relative to the root of the partition that contains rEFInd (either EFI or a HFS+ partition). EFI in the path is a folder at the root and not the volume name of the root.
My complaint was that the tools folder was not relative to rEFInd like the drivers folder is.
Aah yes I found that odd too.
While \EFI\Tools is fine for an EFI install, it makes slightly less sense for an --ownhfs install but it's not a big deal since it works as is.