a new rEFInd.iso

• What is this?
• why?
• TL;DR
• Create rEFInd.iso with NvmExpressDxe-64.efi driver
  • Preparation
  • Get Started
• references

This article shows you how to build a new rEFInd.iso with custom settings

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What is this?

This article shows you how to build a new rEFInd.iso with custom settings.

rEFInd_nvmeDriver.iso is a modified rEFInd.iso with NvmExpressDxe-64.efi driver, as well as menu timeout set to 3

This is a personal note only.

why?

I’m using an old motherboard, which doesn’t support modern nvme disk by default.

Armed with nvme-pcie adapter as well as this rEFInd_nvmeDriver.iso, the machine should (at least for me) be able to detect the nvme drive during bootloader, and then successfully boot to the installed OS.

TL;DR

Download the rEFInd_nvmeDriver.iso file should be enough. The rest of this README is only for note purpose.

Create rEFInd.iso with NvmExpressDxe-64.efi driver

Preparation

• linux

• NvmExpressDxe-64.efi

  • more drivers

• latest refind-bin-x.zip

  • I use refind-bin-1.14.0.2.zip here

Get Started

# create a ramdisk /dev/ram0
mknod -m 0777 /dev/ram0 b 1 0

# To give it size until the drive is full (for me it is 16MB)
# ignore the full size error
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram0

# use gparted or others to re-format it as fat16
mke2fs /dev/ram0
gparted /dev/ram0

• install refind to /dev/ram0

  • refind-install file is from refind-bin-x.zip as mentioned above

$ cd ~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.14.0.2
$ sudo bash ./refind-install --usedefault /dev/ram0 --alldrivers

ShimSource is none
Installing rEFInd on Linux....
Copied rEFInd binary files

Copying sample configuration file as refind.conf; edit this file to configure
rEFInd.


Installation has completed successfully.

Unmounting install dir

❗	mount: /tmp/refind_install: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/ram0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

💡	If above message displayed, change /dev/ram0 to other format, like fat16, and try to refind-install again

• customize rEFNnd

# mount /dev/ram0 to /mnt directory
mount /dev/ram0 /mnt

# add nvme driver
cp NvmExpressDxe-64.efi /mnt/EFI/BOOT/drivers_x64/

📎	Optional do other stuffs you want, e.g, change menu timeout

# optional
# change menu timeout from 20 to 3 seconds
$ sed -i'' 's/timeout 20/timeout 3/g' /mnt/EFI/BOOT/refind.conf
$ cat /mnt/EFI/BOOT/refind.conf | grep -i ^timeout

timeout 3

• Final step: save /dev/ram0 to a new iso

# Now we need to save /dev/ram0 to iso
# create a blank 1G new.iso
dd if=/dev/zero of=new.iso bs=1M count=1024

# Write the disk device /dev/ram0 to the ISO file
dd if=/dev/ram0 of=new.iso bs=1M

references

• https://superuser.com/a/835243

• https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html