Booting UEFI/EFI Computers - What Works, What Doesn't

[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. ... 159#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. ... 720#462720 or Ted Dog's "No Format Install", http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 727#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]

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

Code: Select all

root# inxi -Fxx
System:    Host: puppypc12956 Kernel: 4.1.11 x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.6.4) Desktop: JWM 2.3.4 dm: N/A Distro: tahrpup64 6.0.5
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: M5A97 LE R2.0 version: Rev 1.xx serial: 150545593600028
           Bios: American Megatrends version: 2601 date: 03/24/2015
CPU:       Hexa core AMD FX-6300 Six-Core (-MCP-) cache: 12288 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm) bmips: 42158.8 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 2000.00 MHz 2: 1400.00 MHz 3: 1400.00 MHz 4: 2000.00 MHz 5: 1400.00 MHz 6: 3000.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GT218 [GeForce 210] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0a65 
           X.org: 1.15.1 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: vesa) tty size: 68x23 Advanced Data: N/A for root 
Audio:     Card-1: NVIDIA High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0be3 
           Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2 chip-ID: 1002:4383 
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k4.1.11
Network:   Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller 
           driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: d000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 1c:87:2c:5a:bb:e2
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1120.2GB (6.5% used)
           1: id: /dev/sda model: KINGSTON_SV300S3 size: 120.0GB serial: N/A 
           2: id: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD10EZEX size: 1000.2GB serial: N/A 
Partition: ID: swap-1 size: 8.60GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      System: supported: linear raid0 raid1 raid10 raid6 raid5 raid4 
           No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
           Unused Devices: none
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 153 Uptime: 22 min Memory: 519.2/15927.3MB Runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: N/A 
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.42 running in urxvt) inxi: 1.9.17 

This box has 6 cores,the other 8.This box is Linux only.

All I did was turn off secure boot in the bios and i can boot anything just as I did on older hardware with the traditional non-UEFI bios.

Windows 7,8 and 8.1 no problem. Every linux distro I/ve tried boots without problem whether installed ,or booted from USB or cd/dvd.( I have Windows 10 downloaded but it sucks so bad I can't make myself install it)

Good old legacy Grub to the mbr booting everything installed.

Have had no problems.

[bark_bark_bark]

What works: Disable Secure Boot

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

[BarryK]

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]

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]

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]

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/ ... linux.html

[mcewanw]

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-bootloader ... eboot.html

I'm not worried anyway.

William

[cthisbear]

" 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]

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]

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]

You can find some information:
http://rmprepusb.blogspot.com/2015/07/u ... stems.html

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

[mpanek60]

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

[mcewanw]

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

As far as I know it, DebianDog install has only been designed for traditional MBR and not GPT. Assuming I am correct about that, these alternative partition systems (as well as UEFI booting) needs to be looked into in future DebianDog developments. Trouble is, I'm not sure if Fred or Toni have UEFI booting machines available. I don't and can't see me obtaining one in the near future at least.

William

[jamesbond]

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 ... i-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/packag ... i686-1.txz and http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/packag ... 6_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.

[mcewanw]

No new machines needed. "UEFI" is just firmware, just like BIOS is. Qemu can support both regular BIOS firmware and UEFI firmware.

That's interesting. Never thought of using Qemu to test UEFI (would certainly be interested to try Secure Boot too).

William

[smokey01]

jamesbond how do you release the mouse Grab bollocks. If I press Ctrl+Alt+G it only releases it until I click on the desktop then I have to repeat the procedure.

TIA

[gcmartin]

I have reported this (several times) before and I will report again: Running FATDOG as the PC's distro, if anyone starts a Virtual Machine (VM) running the FATDOG distro, you will notice that the distro runs much faster than the main FD7.

Try it yourself for observation using the command that @JamesBond shows earlier; namely

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qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 1024 -bios uefi-bios.bin -cdrom -vga cirrus    path/to/your/FD7.iso

Of course, you can boot any compliant ISO not just FD7.

For Non-EFI (BIOS) VM Guests this works

Code: Select all

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 1024 -cdrom -vga cirrus    path/to/your/FD7.iso

Cheers

[jamesbond]

jamesbond how do you release the mouse Grab bollocks. If I press Ctrl+Alt+G it only releases it until I click on the desktop then I have to repeat the procedure.

You can't. But you can simplify that if you add the "-sdl" parameter - then you only need to press Ctrl+Alt to release the grab.

[jamesbond]

Puppylinux blog has an interesting entry about UEFI: http://blog.puppylinux.com/?viewDetailed=00009