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UEFI On Linux Is Like A Pathogen

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  • #11
    Looks like I'll be hanging onto my aging Abit KN9 mobo a while longer...lucky this board still works. Until UEFI issues get smoothed out over the next generations of hardware I'll hang tight on new hardware purchases

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    • #12
      Coreboot

      I'll rather have Coreboot with SeaBIOS, OpenFirmware or SmartFirmware or TianoCore.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by uid313 View Post
        I'll rather have Coreboot with SeaBIOS, OpenFirmware or SmartFirmware or TianoCore.
        Just need more makers on the bandwagon and at least make a few models available with these firmwares well supported

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        • #14
          Basically it is possible to install grub into mbr (for bios boot) and combine all grub modules into one efi file to put it onto a fat partition for booting via efi. There you add a little grub.cfg with
          Code:
          search -sf /boot/grub/grub.cfg
          source /boot/grub/grub.cfg
          and you can boot via bios AND efi (after setting up your efi boot entry using efibootmgr or via efi shell and running the efi binary). I did that for testing (used gpt as partition scheme, there you have to use --force for grub-install in mbr mode). It is also possible to chainload win from grub booted via efi (chainloader BOOTX64.EFI) or you can start the efi shell using chainloader as well. If you did not succeed with efibootmgr you can simply use a fat usb key with a /EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI and boot that with efi mode. You can use whatever you like as efi binary, a shell or maybe grub. If somebody knows how to boot pxe via uefi let me know...

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          • #15
            Originally posted by Kano View Post
            If somebody knows how to boot pxe via uefi let me know...
            Not sure what you mean by this... in my experience UEFI supports PXE just like BIOS. On my ASUS board it allows PXE boot from either the built in Realtek NIC or the Intel Gigabit Desktop PCI-E card I have in there. I'd have to look but I'm pretty sure they appear as separate entries in the boot manager.

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            • #16
              I can certainly select lan boot, but pxe is then booted in bios mode on my test systems. you see that when you try efibootmgr, if it does not run, then you did not boot via efi.

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              • #17
                here's an idea. when the os loads via pxe if you are missing the driver, the software should call the firmware and change the mode on the fly. this way you dont have to slipstream ethernet drivers.

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                • #18
                  i have got absolutely no idea what you want to say. what i tried was compling ipxe as efi target (the default version worked with the used nic), but when i started it via efi shell it did only show a few features (i mainly missed http and sanboot) and did not detect any nic.

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                  • #19
                    abandoned UEFI

                    a few days ago I bought a Dell Latitude E6420 (off Dell Outlet) and it came with Win7pro, and I wanted to dual-boot it. For me the win7 boot is used purely as a rescue mode and/or download stuff to a fat32 partition for access by linux.

                    the initial problems were that the win7 install was done with a UEFI boot partition, and I couldn't shrink windows below 160GB, and I wanted to squash it below 40GB ideally.

                    so I booted a retail win7-64 disk and deleted all partitions completely and created new ones. Windows created new UEFI boot plus the MSR plus its own partition. All seemed well. Then I installed linux and it finished and openSuse12.1-64 appeared to recognise the GPT table and do all the right things and completed to give me a working desktop. However, on rebooting, I couldn't get Windows to boot, and found that linux didn't boot properly either, and I wasted a few hours fiddling with UEFI.

                    Eventually I gave up, turned UEFI off in the bios, booted a linux rescue image and wiped the UEFI stuff and GPT partition, and created an old DOS style MBR partition. Windows then installed OK creating partition entries as expected, and I quickly had a dual boot system, which I am using to post this.


                    I am fairly sure if I had a lot of time and infinite I could have made it work, but since the hard drive is only 320GB I didn't need GPT partitioning, and although I wanted to understand how UEFI worked, ran out of time and patience. A few years ago for a short time I used a Macbook at work and dual-booted OSX with Linux, and used rEfit etc quite successfully.

                    I am thus fairly concerned that it won't be long before BIOSs will only understand UEFI and GPT, and be so locked down so much that the average person won't have any choice in the OS they run. It will also be very difficult for third party tools for making and reproducing OS images, like Acronis, to function effectively at all. Hopefully ARM-based systems will have caught up sufficiently and not have the same lock down?

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by uid313 View Post
                      I'll rather have Coreboot with SeaBIOS, OpenFirmware or SmartFirmware or TianoCore.
                      TianoCore is going to have a lot of the same problems as any other UEFI. The hardware initialization and platform setup may be better, but it contains a lot of code, much of it not thoroughly tested. Fortunately you don't have to rely on vendors to make the changes.

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