UEFI Boot

[Juanito]

Did anybody try to boot tinycore via UEFI boot on a non-mac machine?

After tiring of trying to get grub-efi to work on a mac mini (as per grub2 devs, it probably won't work until linux-3.3), I noticed my laptop has an option to use UEFI and prepared a usb stick with grub-efi - the trouble is the laptop (dell latitude e6220) does not recognise the usb stick as efi bootable...

[coreplayer2]

I am hearing of issues booting tc on notebooks using the IsydeH2O UEFI BIOS,  that covers notebooks models by acer, Intel, Dell, Toshiba, HP etc etc... manufactured over the last few years

Am considering compiling a newer kernel which is UEFI aware to support booting on macs as well as other UEFI pc's.   I too am going around in circles trying to boot tc on a USB with grub2 efi

[netnomad]

hi friends,

a project in that direction would be very appreciated.
more and more macs are in my direct environment... friends and relatives.
and more and more pcs getting uefi, too.
hopefully there will be a multifunctional solution, without change of the configuration of the booted system...
... so it will remain a live-system that need no change at the booted system

thank you all for your contributions...

[Juanito]

I can confirm that with a mac (mac mini at least) the combination of rEFIt and grub legacy works.

I suppose grub2 in bios mode would also work with rEFIt, but I didn't try.

I tried grub-efi compiled from bzr a few days ago and it doesn't want to work with either the mac mini or dell uefi, which tends to indicate a newer kernel is required (and/or a less buggy efi/uefi).

[curaga]

Maybe try Fedora's grub legacy fork? It has uefi support and is still updated.

[coreplayer2]

I can't use rEFIt since it requires installation on the host machine.  My goal is a bootable USB to boot mac's with of course TC.    This is possible and have been successful with other distributions.  So am convinced we need to simply compile a newer kernel that is EFI aware to boot TC with.

[curaga]

Given I've had a GPT/EFI usb stick that booted on Macs with the 3.0.3 kernel, I don't think the kernel version is the issue.

[curaga]

coreplayer2 sent me a PM about more instructions, replying here because it might help others too.

It's been a few months since then, so this is all from memory. It was some version of TC4 with the 3.0 kernel.

1. Grab a grub2 efi image (BOOTX64.EFI) from a deb package. I just wanted to quickly get a GPT test USB stick running, so didn't bother building it.
2. Format an empty usb stick with GPT, one fat32 partition (required by EFI to be fat32).
3. Create directories efi/boot and put BOOTX64.EFI under there.

After that it was simply a grub2 config file and the usual TC setup.

[netnomad]

hi curaga,

for me it's no problem to partition in the "old school" ways... like fdisk, cfdisk etc.
is there a own boot-block for gpt?
would you be so kind and be more specific how to use gpt?
could you please provide your grub2-configuration?
there are so many ways, perhaps there are some tiny differences to use grub2 with gpt,
perhaps it's just one line or a tiny variable...
does it work on an usbstick, even to multiboot different distributions, live-isos or frugal-installed-files?
thank you for your contributions.

[curaga]

Yes, you need a GPT-able partitioning tool, like parted or the GPT fdisk tools (http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ ). Though I think our parted extension is too old for GPT. It's not much different from MBR, with the exception that there is no boot block at all.

I don't have the stick anymore, so I can't show the grub2 config etc.

It was only TC on that stick, but the grub2 menu showed OK, so dualboot should work. As for the iso loop boots, I really think those shouldn't be done, they have many downsides for the only gain of not properly installing the distro (aka a couple minutes of your time).

edit: Ah, I see we have gdisk.tcz in the repo.

[coreplayer2]

Thanks curaga


I find a GPT partition is mandatory.  I simply format the whole partition FAT32   


it appears the magic source is in the cfg file and it's it's location.   Still have not managed to boot a kernel less than 3.2.x yet, but if you say you've done it then I'll continue on those lines..

I've found this a great reference http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/efistub.html

[curaga]

Yep, that is a nice way to avoid a bootloader altogether, kind of like direct-booting a kernel from a floppy used to be.

Though, I've heard many reports of extremely buggy EFI bioses where using efibootmgr caused an unbootable system, and having to replace the bios chip.

[coreplayer2]

Yeah it sounds great until you try     weeks if not months later I'm still trying... lol

[Juanito]

After using gdisk to create the gpt partition, the usb stick is at least recognised in uefi boot mode on the dell, and grub2-efi creates BOOTX64.EFI automatically (rather than grub.efi).

..but the os is not found

Now I suppose I need an efi enabled kernel to be able to use efibootmgr...

[curaga]

os? Does that mean the bios doesn't load grub, or grub doesn't load tc?