UEFI On Linux Is Like A Pathogen

[DeepDayze]

Would be nice if some smart people would come up with a solid reference design for a Coreboot based motherboard that plays nice with Windows and Linux as well as any other OS you want to throw at it. Such a board would sell quite well if its quality at a good price point and that runs rings around the MS-controlled hardware. A board like this can even be made by an indie mobo maker

[hoohoo]

My experience was if I let Linux (OpenSuSE 11.4, various Ubuntu, Fedora 15/16) or WIndows handle the disk automagically then everything was fine as long as it was a single-boot install.

Dual boot Windows + Linux just did not work. I got pretty deep into it - I could manually install either, but not both.

[Kano]

Just add a /boot/grub/custom.cfg (if it is sourced by default) with a content like:

if search -nf /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BOOTMGR.EFI ; then
  menuentry 'Microsoft Bootmgr' {
    search -sf /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BOOTMGR.EFI
    chainloader /EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI                                                                                                                                          
fi

Then you can boot win directly from grub (even if win is on another hd!).

[hoohoo]

Just add a /boot/grub/custom.cfg (if it is sourced by default) with a content like:

if search -nf /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BOOTMGR.EFI ; then
  menuentry 'Microsoft Bootmgr' {
    search -sf /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BOOTMGR.EFI
    chainloader /EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI                                                                                                                                          
fi

Then you can boot win directly from grub (even if win is on another hd!).

Very neat, thanks Kano! I'll give a try.

[uid313]

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?

Actually ARM is worse. First ARM is way much less standarized than x86.
Second, to get certified for the Windows 8 Logo on ARM the motherboard must have SecureBoot enabled with no way of disabling it.

[Qaridarium]

in my point of view: UEFI is just another trick to hurt linux and the free world.

like the ACPI power saving features only for "windows" like directX to hurt openGL

the usefulness for windows users are near by zero.

[Delgarde]

2214 page specification?
what the fuck?

Yep... everything you need to know about the spec, right there in the page count. What odds that *anyone* has actually read the entire thing?

[Kano]

@Qaridarium

First of all the BIOS MBR boot code does not support larger hds than 2 tb. You can partition your drive and use it with Linux anyway but you need to boot from below 2 tb. But thats definitely a stupid hack. EFI is definitely not straight forward to use and you can definitely brick some systems using efibootmgr (you should be really careful not to try this with a mac, better use bless). But I do not get why you love BIOS booting so much...

The whole secure boot thingy does not matter at all for x86 and who really needs to buy Win8 arm systems to put Linux on it? You can buy those devices preloaded with Linux or Android anyway.

I find it very interesting to play with EFI and found already a bug that prevented booting from a fat partition with EFI label. This usually happens ONLY when the label is set directly on format, then you have got a fat entry with EFI name before the EFI directory entry. And believe it or not, i have got a system that does not find the EFI directory in that case because it does not check for the directory flag...

[Qaridarium]

@Qaridarium

First of all the BIOS MBR boot code does not support larger hds than 2 tb. You can partition your drive and use it with Linux anyway but you need to boot from below 2 tb. But thats definitely a stupid hack. EFI is definitely not straight forward to use and you can definitely brick some systems using efibootmgr (you should be really careful not to try this with a mac, better use bless). But I do not get why you love BIOS booting so much...

The whole secure boot thingy does not matter at all for x86 and who really needs to buy Win8 arm systems to put Linux on it? You can buy those devices preloaded with Linux or Android anyway.

just tell me who needs a /boot/ perdition/hard-drive bigger than 2TB ?
i already use a /boot/ perdition with 8gb.
you pay 7000€ für a 2TB SSD as a boot device right now.

"You can partition your drive and use it with Linux anyway but you need to boot from below 2 tb. But thats definitely a stupid hack. "

LOL thats not a stupid hack i use this metod for the 8gb limit and 128gb limit for years.

2TB for a boot perdition is OMG so much you never can use 2TB for a kernel and stuff.

just tell me: why in hell do you need more than 2TB for the boot folder /boot/ ?

I find it very interesting to play with EFI and found already a bug that prevented booting from a fat partition with EFI label. This usually happens ONLY when the label is set directly on format, then you have got a fat entry with EFI name before the EFI directory entry. And believe it or not, i have got a system that does not find the EFI directory in that case because it does not check for the directory flag...

yes bugs everywhere...

[Kano]

It is completely outdated to use boot partitions. grub2 has got even raid support. If you use a partition for /home it would be more logical. But your 8/128 gb bios bugs should not happen with efi (even in the high tb range). First of all it does not only solve the 2tb boot problem. When you start the efi shell (some boards have it included, most can run it from usb) you have got a dos like interface including text/hexeditor. You can start efi apps just like running dos executeables (identified by .efi extension), just you use fs0: or fs1: and so on instead of a: or b:. It is just like a mini os and has got scripting features. You can try that with vbox in efi mode as well when you don't have got a new board. Basically all 2012 launched boards should have got full efi support. Before some vendors like gigabyte really ductaped an uefi addon onto an old bios - but even there beginning with the intel 7 series the boards should be using native uefi. I do not own amd boards, but most likely there is uefi as well. It seems you have got wet dreams of good old bios systems, but the remaining ones without uefi support are just legacy hardware today. Also you are NOT forced to use uefi mode, basically every board has got a bios emulation layer on top. This is called CSM or Compatibility Support Module and allows you to boot from your old hds/dvds. The problem is however if you use that mode you don't have got access to uefi features. You can for example add a boot entry called "Qaridarium OS" which you could select as boot choice. I did not try the Linux 3.3 feature yet to add an efi stub to the kernel, but most likely you could boot without grub as well (your kernel should not need an initrd of course). There are lots of things you can try with it, so just do it instead of praising some legacy system that was invented 1981...