GRUB 2.03 - anyone using it?

[PDP-8]

Wonder if any bootloader fans are using grub 2.03 yet?  Supposedly stable, and includes support for Busybox date command - although I never had a problem with that.

For fun, I just burned TCpure64 with the latest YUMI-EFI specific version, and it appears to be using 2.03 ...  hey, just don't edit the wrong grub - plenty of them in there.

[PDP-8]

Ah, so perhaps this is why *just one* of my boxes, an Intel Computestick only seems to run with Grub V2.x - the bios has a setting for Ubuntu or Windows, and standard TC just drops to the efi shell.  My thought here is that bios might be looking for grub2 compatability (rather than ubuntu proper).

Gulp! :

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html

It's been updated over the years near the bottom.

Wow.  Yeah, that's beyond my pay-grade.

[PDP-8]

I took off the Yumi training-wheels, and followed Juanito's excellent guide:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,19364.msg119228.html#msg119228

Grub 2.02 boots the Computestick just fine ....

[coreplayer2]

Hey PDP-8

IMO, for as far back as I can remember (which is a  very long time) we have incorrectly used terms like BIOS to refer to the “Setup utility” or more recently known as “firmware setup utility” where BIOS and UEFI actually refer to the environment for BOOT execution.

As far as Intel are concerned, there is no such thing as BIOS anymore, Intel embraced  UEFI with support for UEFI only, UEFI with Compatibility Mode or legacy (support for MBR) modes. 

I should back up a little, The old MBR boot environment was limited with size constraints of the drives first sector and 16 bit code.   Whereas UEFI has none of these limitations and is additionally cross platform compatible.

Ok so moving on with the various modes. 
UEFI only mode expects a Guid Partition Table, an ESP and a boot loader (file) in a specific location within the ESP.
UEFI with CSM (Compatibility mode) adds support for hardware which doesn’t yet support EFI and provides support for a boot loader as per the MBR specification
Legacy mode supports only an MBR partition table and boot loader with part of its code installed on the boot drive’s first sector.

How manufacturers present these modes will vary considerably.   When they gave a Windows or other OS option they were actually referring to the type and more importantly the environment and location of the boot loader.




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[coreplayer2]

I took off the Yumi training-wheels, and followed Juanito's excellent guide:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,19364.msg119228.html#msg119228

Grub 2.02 boots the Computestick just fine ....

While this method provides compatibility with older BIOS/MBR machines it is super inefficient (slow as molasses) if booting only UEFI machines  obviously with CSM


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[PDP-8]

Great explanation - cleared a few cobwebs for me ..

Had it not been for Juanito's tip about not being scared of UEFI with x86_64, and using it if available, I'd have been doing what many probably do - hurting your performance by assuming csm is the way to go.  Major kudos for that tip!

Much of my installs are on mini-pc's, computesticks and the like - which all have somewhat abbreviated setups, or features that can conflict with each other.  Let's just say I do a lot of rebooting and testing..   One of my machines I'm about to shelve because it is so weird - you can force UEFI only on nearly everything, even video, BUT for some reason it always seems to go csm no matter what.

The absolute BEST setup utility I have ever seen is with the larger Intel NUC boxes.  Wow - totally beautiful and well thought out.  It's not your average AMI setup, but an entirely nice gui thing.  One is tempted to spend almost too much time there...

It made me think that if one is a kernel building guru, they might be able to coordinate between custom setup utility features and the kernel parameters for best benefit.  Heh, well beyond just disablng secure-boot.