UEFI CD boot on Getac Laptop

[theshower35]

Anyone have any luck booting a Getac laptop using Tinycorepure64-10.1? I was able to get it to boot but only with a USB stick, never with a CD. All I ever get is a single underscore in the top left of the screen. We used to have an older model that was uefi/bios bootable and it worked fine but now that we've upgraded to the S410G4 model it only supports uefi boot. I've poured through the forums and see people say they have had success with a CD but there's not much documentation on how it was done.

I was also curious if it potentially has anything to do with the base image (efiboot.img) in /EFI/BOOT/ being a DOS/MBR boot sector, when I would most likely want a GPT/EFI image?

[theshower35]

Nvm figured it out.

[LotusDew]

Hi ,

I have booted using EFI. Its a bit of work.

This blog helped me a lot: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Linux/TinycoreUEFI.shtml

You will need to create a vfat partition of about 1000 mb where you need to place the EFI related boots. Also using Gparted you need to set the boot and esp flags.

The remaining space can be used for other stuff. The best idea is to copy the cde folder from your usb image to this EFI partion.

Let me know if you are able to do it - else I will post a video using youtube on steps.

[nick65go]

When I hear people talking about an ESP partition size (for UEFI boot) of near 1GB (=1000mb) I feel sick. Do not that people realize the fake that Micro$oft is spreading about its selfish interest?

Have you ever imagine that you can UEFI boot from an ESP partition of less than 30 MB (or what ever is the MINIMUM FA16/32 size); The hint: grub in ESP but kernel can be in ext2/other partition.

Or that you can have MANY (lest say 4) ESP partitions in any order on your HDD/SDD, be it MBR or GPT partition scheme?

Or even that your grub of less than 160 KB (yes KB not 20 MB) can boot from fat32 ESP the linux on ext2 partition? Hint: grub has only necessary modules built-in to see the ext2 partition, then kernel takes over.

Not yet? Then Sorry, you need to learn more about (just search this forum about info how can be done).
FYI: "tiny" is not a good friend with "giga" (bytes, whatever).

[LotusDew]

Not quite sure about the rant.

If you know better educate us ...

[nick65go]

Not quite sure about the rant.

If you know better educate us ...

It was not a rant, I just provide free info about ESP partition size, and about grub size, and hint about NOT using ESP to store the kernel on it, etc.

FYI: did you know that I can boot in UEFI, from CDROM, with an ESP partition of just 360KB (KB, yes, ESP is FAT12 formatted as a FDD [floppy-disk] with a mini-grub inside FDD that can read ISO). Build details were also provided.

If you are curios, just search this forum about my messages, regarding words like ESP, grub, etc. So there are free and detailed educations, with example how I did it. If searching the forum is too hard, then ignore me. Have a nice day, too.
here is a link: Re: Bootx64.efi missing? « Reply #18 on: 15-11-2021, 11:21:32
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25330.msg161991.html#msg161991

[LotusDew]

Okay I will go through this. Honestly I found it quite an achievement to be able to boot into EFI as I am new to UEFI and bootloaders. So need to step up to the next level I guess.

[CardealRusso]

heh, if you want to know, the "final" step is to boot directly from the motherboard's uefi, without depending on grub. After all, this is the purpose of UEFI, to boot without depending on other bootloaders

https://gist.github.com/benjaminblack/f082e0a6c43ad223cf18ae58cdabfd76

It's not complicated (it's not required either, you can avoid this and keep using grub) but it's interesting. (using this method need a gpt partition)

Nvm figured it out.

You have no idea how traumatized I am by seeing this type of message when I search for a problem on Google.

[gadget42]

...

Nvm figured it out.

You have no idea how traumatized I am by seeing this type of message when I search for a problem on Google.

seconded on the trauma bit when the solution is found but not shared!

[theshower35]

Half of the reason I posted the follow up of saying I figured it out without sharing what I did was because I was frustrated with this problem and the other half is because I wasn't necessarily the one who figured out the solution lol. I also like how after I say I figured it out I get a bunch of responses. Anyways, I got pretty close to figuring it out and had a general idea of a way to get it to work but just didn't know how to. Had someone from our OS team take a look at it and they were able to find a solution. They said they would make step-by-step instructions when they had time but haven't yet provided it. What I can give you guys is a tree of the working directory and files. We used the base TinyCorePure64 14.0 iso provided on the tinycorelinux download page, along with some extra boot configs that you will see. It originally supported MBR boot as well but I trimmed that off since I just needed UEFI only boot. After creating the iso change the user permissions if needed and burn it to a CD (I used brasero). This was all done in Linux.

Code: [Select]

tree *
TC_14
├── boot
│   ├── corepure64.gz
│   ├── isolinux
│   │   ├── boot.cat
│   │   ├── boot.msg
│   │   ├── efiboot.img
│   │   ├── f1
│   │   ├── f2
│   │   ├── f3
│   │   ├── f4
│   │   ├── isolinux.bin
│   │   ├── isolinux.cfg
│   │   └── menu.c32
│   └── vmlinuz64
├── cde
│   ├── copy2fs.lst
│   ├── onboot.lst
│   ├── optional
│   │   ├── aterm.tcz
│   │   ├── aterm.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── bzip2-lib.tcz
│   │   ├── bzip2-lib.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── fltk-1.3.tcz
│   │   ├── fltk-1.3.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── flwm.tcz
│   │   ├── flwm.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── freetype.tcz
│   │   ├── freetype.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── glib2.tcz
│   │   ├── glib2.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── graphite.tcz
│   │   ├── graphite.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── harfbuzz.tcz
│   │   ├── harfbuzz.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── imlib2-bin.tcz
│   │   ├── imlib2-bin.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── imlib2.tcz
│   │   ├── imlib2.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libffi.tcz
│   │   ├── libffi.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libfontenc.tcz
│   │   ├── libfontenc.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libICE.tcz
│   │   ├── libICE.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libjpeg-turbo.tcz
│   │   ├── libjpeg-turbo.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libpng.tcz
│   │   ├── libpng.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libSM.tcz
│   │   ├── libSM.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libX11.tcz
│   │   ├── libX11.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXau.tcz
│   │   ├── libXau.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libxcb.tcz
│   │   ├── libxcb.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXcursor.tcz
│   │   ├── libXcursor.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXdmcp.tcz
│   │   ├── libXdmcp.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXext.tcz
│   │   ├── libXext.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXfixes.tcz
│   │   ├── libXfixes.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXfont.tcz
│   │   ├── libXfont.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXmu.tcz
│   │   ├── libXmu.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXrender.tcz
│   │   ├── libXrender.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── libXt.tcz
│   │   ├── libXt.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── pcre.tcz
│   │   ├── pcre.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── wbar.tcz
│   │   ├── wbar.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── Xfbdev.tcz
│   │   ├── Xfbdev.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── Xlibs.tcz
│   │   ├── Xlibs.tcz.md5.txt
│   │   ├── Xprogs.tcz
│   │   └── Xprogs.tcz.md5.txt
│   └── xbase.lst
└── EFI
    └── BOOT
        ├── BOOT.conf
        ├── BOOTX64.EFI
        ├── fonts
        │   └── unicode.pf2
        ├── grub.cfg
        ├── grubx64.efi
        ├── splash.png
        └── x86_64-efi
            ├── gfxterm_background.mod
            ├── gfxterm.mod
            └── png.mod

Here is the command used to build the iso (might have to run as sudo depending on file permissions):

Code: [Select]

xorriso -as mkisofs \
  -iso-level 3 \
  -r -V ISO_VOLUME_LABEL_NAME \
  -o ISO_NAME.iso \
  -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin \
  -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat \
  -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -no-emul-boot \
  -eltorito-alt-boot \
  -e boot/isolinux/efiboot.img \
  -no-emul-boot \
  -isohybrid-gpt-basdat \
  DIRECTORY_WITH_FILES (in my case TC_14)

Our efiboot.img also seems to be a bit different so here's the output of running the file command on it:
efiboot.img: DOS/MBR boot sector, code offset 0x3c+2, OEM-ID "mkfs.fat", sectors/cluster 4, reserved sectors 4, root entries 512, sectors 19684 (volumes <=32 MB), Media descriptor 0xf8, sectors/FAT 20, sectors/track 32, heads 64, serial number 0xcea92b30, unlabeled, FAT (16 bit)