Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

mikeslr

Hi All,

Many of us "old-timers" --myself, in particular-- don't have any computer which requires or even permits booting via UEFI/EFI. But sensing that many new-comers to Puppy would have such computers --and all of us will probably acquire one in the future-- I started this thread http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=858159#858159 in the hope of providing information about how to go about deploying Puppies on them. I chose the Beginner's SubForum as the location most likely to attract the intended audience.

Several different methods were suggested. But It has only today occurred to me that receiving feed-back would be useful. I draw my inspiration from the thread associated with the "Puppy on Laptops" Wiki.

If you have a UEFI/EFI computer please post to this thread what worked. Please be specific giving us the make and model of the computer, the Puppy which you were able to boot, and the technique you employed.

If you have difficulty booting a Puppy specifically built to boot from UEFI/EFI computers, such as FatDog64, please first seek advise on that Puppy's thread, and then post a link here to the discussion there.

Similarly, if you've run into a problem using either noryb009's "Lick", http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=462720#462720 or Ted Dog's "No Format Install", http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=818727#818727 please try to resolve any issues on their respective threads and then post a link to the discussion.

Thanks in advance,

mikesLr

James C · Joined: 26 Mar 2009 Posts: 6734 Location: Kentucky

I have a couple of fairly new desktops with the same UEFI motherboard.

bark_bark_bark · Joined: 05 Jun 2012 Posts: 1935 Location: Wisconsin USA

What works: Disable Secure Boot

What doesn't work: smashing your computer through a window.

BarryK · Posted: Sun 27 Mar 2016, 04:55 Post subject:

My new Asus Vivobook E200HA baby laptop boots Quirky Linux from USB Flash-stick.

The only thing had to do is disable secure-boot.

I have documented it here:
http://barryk.org/quirky/uefi.htm

Note, the Quirky installer script creates a bootable USB Flash stick that uses Syslinux, and will boot on ye olde MBR BIOS PCs as well as UEFI PCs -- it is a chameleon.

Burn_IT · Joined: 12 Aug 2006 Posts: 3656 Location: Tamworth UK

Remember Microsoft and Red Hat are pushing to make secure boot compulsory and not able to be turned off.

Since they control the standards it is pretty much a done deal.

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 6730 Location: Earth

Disable secure-boot: Chameleons boot too.

Current PCs which do not/will not upgrade their BIOS/UEFI/EFI will not be affected by future policy changes.

Burn_IT · Joined: 12 Aug 2006 Posts: 3656 Location: Tamworth UK

MS and Red Hat are going to force all machines that use either Windows or Red Hat to NOT have that option.

See:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901262/microsoft-tightens-windows-10s-secure-boot-screws-where-does-that-leave-linux.html

mcewanw · Joined: 16 Aug 2007 Posts: 3200

A few years ago, lots of Linux people were panicking about Secure Boot. However, it doesn't seem to be the nightmare people imagined it would be. I can't myself yet confirm that since I have no Secure Boot capable machine but this guy's informed opinion seems to confirm that it is no big deal really. First he discusses disabling secure boot on machines that allow that, but he also opinions that keeping secure boot enabled is not such a huge issue (particularly for those Linux distributions that provide their own signed keys, which includes Ubuntu):

http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/secureboot.html

I'm not worried anyway.

William

cthisbear · Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 4469 Location: Sydney Australia

" but this guy's informed opinion seems to confirm that it is no
big deal really. "

Wait until you come onto a HP crapset machine.
Toshiba aren't too hot either.

Stepping on dog doo is enjoyable compared to Microsoft's antics.

Chris.

smokey01 · Posted: Wed 30 Mar 2016, 03:54 Post subject:

Unfortunately I have a HP probook 4540s which is a pretty good laptop but it does have UEFI. It was a pain to getting it to work with Linux, Fatdog in particular. I had to turn off secure boot.

I have to delve through 5 levels of menus before the UEFI boot manager is displayed. Once I get there I have a nice graphical menus that works but it is a pain to modify. It's just so different to GRUB and Grub4Dos.

Does anyone know how to bypass the first 5 menus and boot straight to the graphics/final menu?

Here is a video I made to explain the problem to Rod Smith previously mentioned in this thread. http://smokey01.com/grant/uefi.mp4 43M

ozsouth · Joined: 01 Jan 2010 Posts: 703 Location: S.E Australia

My 1 yr old HP laptop allows me to disable secure boot, but I can't get any Puppy bootloader to work for dual-boot (likely my inability, but several tries failed). Barry's previous 'Quirky on a stick' booted directly. Wish I could do dual booting (& HDD install) with that. I'm using my 6 yr old win 7 Toshiba laptop which dual boots - HP sits in a cupboard as swapping out the hardrive takes ages.

d4p · Joined: 12 Mar 2007 Posts: 436

You can find some information:
http://rmprepusb.blogspot.com/2015/07/using-easy2boot-with-uefi-only-systems.html

In my experience using Easy2boot on UEFI machine.
You dont need to turn off the secure boot.
Fatdog works fine.

mpanek60 · Joined: 11 Apr 2015 Posts: 12 Location: california USA

"DebianDog" install deleted a GPT flashstick. Slacko32 install wouldn't install to a GPT stick.

mcewanw · Joined: 16 Aug 2007 Posts: 3200

jamesbond · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 3460 Location: The Blue Marble

No new machines needed. "UEFI" is just firmware, just like BIOS is. Qemu can support both regular BIOS firmware and UEFI firmware. Here's one you can use: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/source/700/patches/uefi-bios.bin. If you don't trust my copy then get it from the horse's mouth: http://www.tianocore.org/ovmf/ - comes with 32-bit and 64-bit UEFI firmware (64-bit is more common).

If you can't be bothered, just get latest Fatdog64 and its devx. Boot it, and load its devx. You can then emulate UEFI with qemu like this: "qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 1024 -bios uefi-bios.bin -cdrom your-test.iso -vga cirrus".

You can even emulate secure boot if you want to, but it's a bit tedious because you need to do the secure boot setup every time (qemu doesn't support NVRAM so any changes you need will be wiped out as soon as you quit qemu).

EDIT:
If you need EFI bootloaders for testing, I have grub2.efi for both 32-bit and 64-bit UEFI (64-bit UEFI is more common), get it from here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/packages/710/grub2-efi32-2.00-i686-1.txz and http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/packages/710/grub2-efi64-2.00-x86_64-1.txz. There are 32-bit and 64-bit syslinux UEFI bootloaders as well from the same place. And of course, when talking about UEFI bootloaders, one must not forget rEFInd (I have refind package too, but you'd probably better off with the official binary from the site). Lots of choices.