[arch-general] UEFI experience - recommendations needed. - Arch-general

[arch-general] UEFI experience - recommendations needed.

Mike Cloaked

5 Jan 2013 5 Jan '13

8:23 p.m.

I am building a machine which has an EFI capable boot on the motherboard together with an mSATA drive for the root and boot partitions and an SSD for the /opt and swap partitions, and just a single arch x86_64 install when it is built - no dual booting to other OSes. I have been looking up information about UEFI with GPT partitioning and have read about various problems that people have had with such systems. So at this stage I am unsure whether to stick with what I know (BIOS/MBR and GRUB2 with full systemd) or whether to plunge into the unknown (for me!) and try EFI/GPT! (with rEFInd) Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR? I would be interested to hear from anyone with this kind of experience running arch - if it is useful the motherboard I am using is an Intel DQ77KB (which I intend to update with the latest BIOS firmware) and with the Intel i3-3220T CPU. Thanks for any replies (and useful links) -- mike c

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Corrado Primier

5 Jan 5 Jan

8:45 p.m.

2013/1/5 Mike Cloaked

...

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list?

I've got a 2008 Macbook (currently my primary mobile system) running. After the initial learning curve (it's quite more complex than traditional MBR/BIOS systems) I find I like it. Just a caveat: if you have an nVidia card pay attention to the driver you want to use, nouveau gets a video memory corruption and freezes the system at boot (nomodeset is an option, but you have no X server). The proprietary driver works but... well... it's proprietary, and on some hardware revisions has bugs (on my 9400M it breaks the VTs as soon as X starts). C

Mike Cloaked

6 Jan 6 Jan

10:45 a.m.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Corrado Primier wrote:

...

2013/1/5 Mike Cloaked

...
Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list?

I've got a 2008 Macbook (currently my primary mobile system) running. After the initial learning curve (it's quite more complex than traditional MBR/BIOS systems) I find I like it.

Just a caveat: if you have an nVidia card pay attention to the driver you want to use, nouveau gets a video memory corruption and freezes the system at boot (nomodeset is an option, but you have no X server). The proprietary driver works but... well... it's proprietary, and on some hardware revisions has bugs (on my 9400M it breaks the VTs as soon as X starts).

C

Thanks Corrado - the system I am planning actually doesn't have an Nvidia graphics card - it is pure Intel (HD 2500) onboard graphics. From what I have read it will hopefully play nicely with EFI but I am certainly still reading lots! I have all the hardware bits in a pile and once I know which way I am going then I will take an evening out to put the hardware together and then play (!) with the boot process - it is quite exciting to be at the cutting edge - though of course a little nerve racking too! I guess since it is a brand new system if it turns out that there are problems with it under EFI then I can always start again from scratch and change back to legacy methods! However it does look like with some work it should be possible to get the new boot system going. You quoted issues with breaking VTs on your system under EFI - I have had some systems do that a few years ago even with BIOS/MBR with Nvidia graphics too! Anyway it should be both fun and interesting getting my system working.... and once I have it working (with EFI) if I find anything which is different to the current wiki info I will add in any important details to the arch wiki so that others can benefit from my findings too - though it will be a couple of weeks before I have a working system I expect. However it is also relevant to the issue of secure boot at some point since this year there will be Windows 8 machines coming into the stores (on EFI hardware), and I expect that secure boot will become something that will need to be tackled by some people before too long (or switched off if that is possible where there are problems!) Either way I guess that since EFI is going to be the way of the future it is a useful learning curve getting the details understood - and now is about as good a time as any! -- mike c

Tom Gundersen

5 Jan 5 Jan

8:54 p.m.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I recently got an MacBook with which I use EFI/GPT, and it works shockingly well. I use gummiboot as the bootloader and partitioned my disk using gdisk. The only gotcha worth mentioning that I can think of is that your kernel/initramfs must be installed on your EFI partition (which according to some sources should be at least 512MB, though mine is not). It is simple enough to make that work automagically by mounting your EFI partition on /boot (with an /boot/EFI subdirectory), rather than having a separate /boot partition and mounting the EFI partition on /boot/EFI. HTH, Tom

Mike Cloaked

9:05 p.m.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Tom Gundersen wrote:

...

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...
Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I recently got an MacBook with which I use EFI/GPT, and it works shockingly well.

I use gummiboot as the bootloader and partitioned my disk using gdisk.

The only gotcha worth mentioning that I can think of is that your kernel/initramfs must be installed on your EFI partition (which according to some sources should be at least 512MB, though mine is not). It is simple enough to make that work automagically by mounting your EFI partition on /boot (with an /boot/EFI subdirectory), rather than having a separate /boot partition and mounting the EFI partition on /boot/EFI.

HTH,

Tom

Thanks Tom - that is useful - I am doing as much reading as possible and also found a link this evening which has useful info: http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html and http://pcavdisor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/beginners-guide-to-installing-archli... though I will read more before making a final decision.... I guess uefi is still very new and only a minority of users have got to grips with it yet - so I still feel a little twitchy about making it my primary boot mechanism! -- mike c

Curtis Shimamoto

9:08 p.m.

On 01/05/13 at 09:54pm, Tom Gundersen wrote:

...

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...
Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I recently got an MacBook with which I use EFI/GPT, and it works shockingly well.

I use gummiboot as the bootloader and partitioned my disk using gdisk.

The only gotcha worth mentioning that I can think of is that your kernel/initramfs must be installed on your EFI partition (which according to some sources should be at least 512MB, though mine is not). It is simple enough to make that work automagically by mounting your EFI partition on /boot (with an /boot/EFI subdirectory), rather than having a separate /boot partition and mounting the EFI partition on /boot/EFI.

HTH,

Tom

...

From what I have been reading in the forums of late, apparently rEFInd has a driver to read ext2 partitions, so can read your kernel/initramfs from there.

Also, srs5694 has indicated that the git version of rEFInd now has a driver to read ext4 as well. -- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Mike Cloaked

9:41 p.m.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Curtis Shimamoto < sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com> wrote:

...

From what I have been reading in the forums of late, apparently rEFInd has a driver to read ext2 partitions, so can read your kernel/initramfs from there.

Also, srs5694 has indicated that the git version of rEFInd now has a driver to read ext4 as well.

-- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Thank you for both replies, Curtis - your comment about a systemd service file to append .efi to the kernel implies that when there is a kernel update you need to either manually create the appropriate filename (presumably in the ESP area?) or have the service file run a command to do that (presumably once written it is automatic?) after the kernel update? It sounds like the way forward is to set up with legacy and switch once the base install is done. Also I usually in the past format the drive before the install with partedmagic booted from a usbkey - but from what I have read partedmagic won't boot from a key with uefi! So if I start out with normal BIOS and do disc partitioning, as well as flashing the BIOS with updated firmware from a bootable dos key then I guess the main install should be as normal - and if it boots with legacy BIOS set with GPT formatted drives then it would hopefully not be too much work changing over to EFI at that stage.

...

From what I read if using rEFInd then Grub is not needed but am still reading!

-- mike c

Curtis Shimamoto

10:01 p.m.

On 01/05/13 at 09:41pm, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Curtis Shimamoto < sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com> wrote:

...
From what I have been reading in the forums of late, apparently rEFInd has a driver to read ext2 partitions, so can read your kernel/initramfs from there.

Also, srs5694 has indicated that the git version of rEFInd now has a driver to read ext4 as well.

-- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Thank you for both replies, Curtis - your comment about a systemd service file to append .efi to the kernel implies that when there is a kernel update you need to either manually create the appropriate filename (presumably in the ESP area?) or have the service file run a command to do that (presumably once written it is automatic?) after the kernel update?

Most firmware seems to want any efi application to have '.efi' at the end of it. From what I have read, there are some instances in which this is not necessary. For instance, from the uefi shell, it seems to append that for you if it is not there. Also, the gummiboot entry on the archiso does not have it either, so maybe gummiboot can do without. I know that if you are using a direct efibootmgr entry, you will more than likely need the '.efi' after it. I use gummiboot now, but I still have systemd set up to append that on every kernel update. There are some good instructions on how to set this up on the uefi wiki page.

...

It sounds like the way forward is to set up with legacy and switch once the base install is done. Also I usually in the past format the drive before the install with partedmagic booted from a usbkey - but from what I have read partedmagic won't boot from a key with uefi! So if I start out with normal BIOS and do disc partitioning, as well as flashing the BIOS with updated firmware from a bootable dos key then I guess the main install should be as normal - and if it boots with legacy BIOS set with GPT formatted drives then it would hopefully not be too much work changing over to EFI at that stage.

Yes, this should be fine. It does not matter how your system is booted when you do the partitioning. The only time you need to actually boot into UEFI is in order to create bootloader entries. This is because the efivars module must be loaded in order for your machine to access the nvram, and the module cannot be loaded unless you are booted with UEFI. A simple way around this is by using the default efi application. If you choose to boot from the disk itself, and have it set to boot UEFI, it will boot whatever is located at \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi. So you can put whatever you want there. When I first began using UEFI, I had the UEFI Shell there so that I could always fall back to something versatile. But now that I have gummiboot set up the way I like it, I have gummiboot there instead.

...

From what I read if using rEFInd then Grub is not needed but am still reading!

Yes, rEFInd is a boot manager, while grub is both a boot loader and a boot manager. The boot manager part is the selection menu, the loader part is actually loading the kernel. But the kernel now features stub loader support, which enables it to act as its own bootloader. Hence you can make an entry directly into your bios' nvram to boot the kernel directly (using efibootmgr). Instructions are also in the wiki.

...

-- mike c

-- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Curtis Shimamoto

9:06 p.m.

On 01/05/13 at 08:23pm, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

I am building a machine which has an EFI capable boot on the motherboard together with an mSATA drive for the root and boot partitions and an SSD for the /opt and swap partitions, and just a single arch x86_64 install when it is built - no dual booting to other OSes. I have been looking up information about UEFI with GPT partitioning and have read about various problems that people have had with such systems.

So at this stage I am unsure whether to stick with what I know (BIOS/MBR and GRUB2 with full systemd) or whether to plunge into the unknown (for me!) and try EFI/GPT! (with rEFInd)

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I would be interested to hear from anyone with this kind of experience running arch - if it is useful the motherboard I am using is an Intel DQ77KB (which I intend to update with the latest BIOS firmware) and with the Intel i3-3220T CPU.

Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

-- mike c

Mike, I use UEFI, and find it as reliable as bios booting ever was. At the moment I was only a single Arch Linux installation on my system. I have a Thinkpad with a 250GB Samsung 840, a 128GB Samsung 830, and a Mushkin Atlas 128GB mSATA. You should know that it is no problem to set things up with legacy bios bootability, and then get your setup booting with UEFI at a later time. The two standards actually don't even conflict with each other and can peacefully coexist. I actually have my system's bios set to UEFI only, but I also have syslinux installed as a just in case kind of thing. I would recommend using GPT no matter which method you choose (or if you choose both). I think MBR partitioning is getting a bit outdated, and extended partitions are to be avoided whenver possible. But from the sound of it, you won't have the need to use extended partitions anyway. Still the flexability of GPT is much greater, and I really like the fact that it puts the partition table in the beginning of the disk like normal, but also ar the end for a backup. I have actually had to restore my partition table from the backup once (while messing around with windows to do a firmware update, windows does some funky things). The only thing I have done that differs from the recommendations of the wiki is that I actually use my EFI system partition as /boot. This is partially because my system does not seem to like the initramfs anywhere but the root of the ESP (when I use an efibootmgr entry to directly boot the kernel stubloader). During updates, it is nice to have the kernel be installed to the correct place. But I still require a systemd.path/systemd.service to append '.efi' to the kernel (which designates it as a UEFI application to my firmware). So I guess just get things set up with the familiar legacy bios, but use GPT for sure. If you want to use the ESP as /boot, I know that syslinux will boot from vfat, but I am not sure about grub as I have not tried it. I hope this information helps. Regards, -- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

David Benfell

9:59 p.m.

On 1/5/2013 12:23 PM, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I am responding to this email from a Windows system. The reason it is a Windows system is that I was unable to find *any* distribution, even those that claim to support EFI in their installers, that in fact successfully installs on this particular system. The problem is not, by the way, the weirdness with keys; Linux just doesn't boot following the installation. grub-efi isn't getting it right. There are instructions for dealing with EFI on the Arch Wiki. They did not work for me. It's too bad, because from everything I can see, EFI and GPT are not, in principle, such bad ideas. But right now, trying to get Linux to run on such a system is problematic. *If* you have the option to choose between EFI and legacy BIOS on your hardware, your situation is different from mine. But I would suggest that you need to *really* understand EFI and have debugging tools for it available.

archlinux＠jelmail.com

6 Jan 6 Jan

8:28 p.m.

On 05/01/13 20:23, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

I am building a machine which has an EFI capable boot on the motherboard together with an mSATA drive for the root and boot partitions and an SSD for the /opt and swap partitions, and just a single arch x86_64 install when it is built - no dual booting to other OSes. I have been looking up information about UEFI with GPT partitioning and have read about various problems that people have had with such systems.

So at this stage I am unsure whether to stick with what I know (BIOS/MBR and GRUB2 with full systemd) or whether to plunge into the unknown (for me!) and try EFI/GPT! (with rEFInd)

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I would be interested to hear from anyone with this kind of experience running arch - if it is useful the motherboard I am using is an Intel DQ77KB (which I intend to update with the latest BIOS firmware) and with the Intel i3-3220T CPU.

Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

Mike, I did some quick testing for a piece of work I recently completed. I used VirtualBox because I don't have UEFI on the metal. I tried a number of aparently UEFI distros like Fedora 18 and Ubuntu but could get none of them to work (they are supposed to work out of the box). The only one I had success with was Arch. I worked through using both GPT and MSDOS partitions and booting the same install via BIOS and UEFI and it all worked seamlessly. For what it's worth, I just used the Arch install CD, the stock UEFI firmware on VirtualBox and Grub (2). I never found any reason to use rEFInd or anything else like that. You can, if you want to, do away with Grub as well as long as your kernel is an EFI application. Best, John

kristof

8:36 p.m.

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:23:39 -0800, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

What bootloader and bootmanager are you going to be using? I'm currently using gummiboot to boot an efistub kernel on my ESP, and as one user mentioned earlier for that setup to work, I need .path and .service units to automatically copy and rename gummiboot, initial ramdisks, and kernels all to their respective places on the EFISYSPART on updates. Running with GRUB or rEFInd is less complicated because they have the capacity to boot files on different partitions.

Mike Cloaked

7 Jan 7 Jan

9:36 a.m.

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 8:36 PM, kristof wrote:

...

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:23:39 -0800, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...
Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

What bootloader and bootmanager are you going to be using? I'm currently using gummiboot to boot an efistub kernel on my ESP, and as one user mentioned earlier for that setup to work, I need .path and .service units to automatically copy and rename gummiboot, initial ramdisks, and kernels all to their respective places on the EFISYSPART on updates. Running with GRUB or rEFInd is less complicated because they have the capacity to boot files on different partitions.

...

From what I have read rEFInd was what seemed the easiest way forward but I am still certainly reading and re-reading and listening to all the advice and experience that arch users add to this thread - for something as new as UEFI I want to be as prepared as possible before I commit to it. Also in answer to John - I will not be using a VM to test first - the new hardware will be the test bed - and hopefully since it is a new(ish) motherboard and a processor that was only released a few months ago by Intel that it will be as ready as possible for my foray into UEFI provided I can absorb all

the good, bad and ugly information so that if anything doesn't work I have a route to workarounds to hand - though once I install for real I may well have additional questions if things don't go according to plan! Either way I am very appreciative of all input on this. -- mike c

Paul Gideon Dann

9:41 a.m.

On Saturday 05 Jan 2013 20:23:39 Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

I am building a machine which has an EFI capable boot on the motherboard together with an mSATA drive for the root and boot partitions and an SSD for the /opt and swap partitions, and just a single arch x86_64 install when it is built - no dual booting to other OSes. I have been looking up information about UEFI with GPT partitioning and have read about various problems that people have had with such systems.

So at this stage I am unsure whether to stick with what I know (BIOS/MBR and GRUB2 with full systemd) or whether to plunge into the unknown (for me!) and try EFI/GPT! (with rEFInd)

Does anyone have experience with such a UEFI system on this list? Apart from the info on the arch wiki and the install wiki info (which I have been reading), are systems like this reliable once installed? Does the routine pacman update process for kernels lead to issues requiring manual intervention with EFI/GPT or it is as generally reliable as BIOS/MBR?

I would be interested to hear from anyone with this kind of experience running arch - if it is useful the motherboard I am using is an Intel DQ77KB (which I intend to update with the latest BIOS firmware) and with the Intel i3-3220T CPU.

Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

I have a Dell Latitude E5520 in EFI-only mode. I set it up over a year ago now by simply following the wiki to set up GPT partitioning and Grub 2 for bootloading. I have three partitions: /boot, /boot/efi, and an LVM PV for the rest. I found it relatively straight-forward; I was actually a little surprised. Paul

LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT

6:46 p.m.

...

-----Original Message----- From: arch-general [mailto:arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org] On Behalf Of Mike Cloaked Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2013 3:24 PM To: General Discussion about Arch Linux Subject: [arch-general] UEFI experience - recommendations needed.

...

I would be interested to hear from anyone with this kind of experience running arch - if it is useful the motherboard I am using is an Intel DQ77KB (which I intend to update with the latest BIOS firmware) and with the Intel i3- 3220T CPU.

Thanks for any replies (and useful links)

-- mike c

Mike, My first experience with Arch Linux has been to install it on a UEFI system (Asus P9X79 WS MB). I have used grub-efi. At first, I was impressed with the fast boot time. However now that I have experience with several older BIOS based setup, I am now unsure by how much I can attribute the fast boot time to UEFI vs Arch slimness. To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI. If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk to do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world! ________________________________ CONFIDENTIALITY : This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. If you are not a named recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to another person, use it for any purpose or store or copy the information in any medium.

Paul Gideon Dann

8 Jan 8 Jan

9:35 a.m.

On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...

To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk to do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS. Paul

Mike Cloaked

9:38 a.m.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...

On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...
To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk to do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS.

Paul

That's interesting - though I guess it is possible to change the BIOS setting just to boot a freedos usbkey to reflash the firmware and then reset to uefi again to boot back into the normal system again? -- mike c

Paul Gideon Dann

10:03 a.m.

On Tuesday 08 Jan 2013 09:38:58 Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...
On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...
To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk

to

...
do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS.

Paul

That's interesting - though I guess it is possible to change the BIOS setting just to boot a freedos usbkey to reflash the firmware and then reset to uefi again to boot back into the normal system again?

Yes, absolutely. That would be admitting defeat, though! Also, when I first set up the machine, there were still some kernel / driver issues with UEFI, but that settled down at around the 3.0 kernel release. Paul

Mike Cloaked

10:55 a.m.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...

On Tuesday 08 Jan 2013 09:38:58 Mike Cloaked wrote:

...
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...
On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...
To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk

to

...
do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS.

Paul

That's interesting - though I guess it is possible to change the BIOS setting just to boot a freedos usbkey to reflash the firmware and then reset to uefi again to boot back into the normal system again?

Yes, absolutely. That would be admitting defeat, though!

Also, when I first set up the machine, there were still some kernel / driver issues with UEFI, but that settled down at around the 3.0 kernel release.

Paul

If I can boot a freedos bootable usbkey under uefi and do the firmware update flash that way it would be great! I will try that as it will be around the first thing I need to do before partitioning the drives and then installing arch.... should be interesting! -- mike c

Paul Gideon Dann

12:01 p.m.

On Tuesday 08 Jan 2013 10:55:46 Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

If I can boot a freedos bootable usbkey under uefi and do the firmware update flash that way it would be great! I will try that as it will be around the first thing I need to do before partitioning the drives and then installing arch.... should be interesting!

If I remember correctly, the issue was that the commands I needed to load the image from syslinux or grub weren't available from UEFI mode. I can't quite remember what I did in the end, I'm afraid. I think I ended up loading memdisk from grub2 using the "linux" command, instead of "linux16" (which wasn't available), and it just worked (surprisingly). Switching to BIOS mode and booting from a USB stick would probably have been a quicker solution. It was also complicated by the issue that my firmware utility was too big for a normal FreeDOS image. I ended up adding this to the Wiki for that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux#Images_that_ar... Paul

Mike Cloaked

3:32 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...

...
If I can boot a freedos bootable usbkey under uefi and do the firmware update flash that way it would be great! I will try that as it will be around the first thing I need to do before partitioning the drives and

On Tuesday 08 Jan 2013 10:55:46 Mike Cloaked wrote: then

...
installing arch.... should be interesting!

If I remember correctly, the issue was that the commands I needed to load the image from syslinux or grub weren't available from UEFI mode. I can't quite remember what I did in the end, I'm afraid. I think I ended up loading memdisk from grub2 using the "linux" command, instead of "linux16" (which wasn't available), and it just worked (surprisingly). Switching to BIOS mode and booting from a USB stick would probably have been a quicker solution.

It was also complicated by the issue that my firmware utility was too big for a normal FreeDOS image. I ended up adding this to the Wiki for that:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux#Images_that_ar...

Paul

Thank you Paul - that is useful to know - though I don't think that in my case the firmware image is all that big - but at least I know the way forward if I have a problem with it. -- mike c

Curtis Shimamoto

5:22 p.m.

On 01/08/13 at 09:38am, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...
On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...
To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk to do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS.

Paul

That's interesting - though I guess it is possible to change the BIOS setting just to boot a freedos usbkey to reflash the firmware and then reset to uefi again to boot back into the normal system again?

-- mike c

Yes, this is what I have done in the past. I actually I just left UEFI and bios enabled for some time. My computer gives the option of whether to give preference to UEFI or legacy bios if both are present. Recently, though I turned off legacy bios, though I am not sure why or if I gain anything from it. -- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Mike Cloaked

6:29 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Curtis Shimamoto < sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 01/08/13 at 09:38am, Mike Cloaked wrote:

...
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Paul Gideon Dann wrote:

...
On Monday 07 Jan 2013 18:46:14 LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT wrote:

...
To be honest, I had 0 problem with installation and UEFI usage. Beside installation, there is very few noticeable difference between BIOS and UEFI. I have insisted to use it just because I had a MB capable of UEFI.

If you want to try UEFI, my advice is. Go for it, there is not much risk to do it but do not expect a big change. This won't shake your world!

Seconded. It makes very little difference, if any. The only time I've noticed is when I wanted to upgrade the laptop's firmware, and getting a FreeDOS image to boot was trickier than with BIOS.

Paul

That's interesting - though I guess it is possible to change the BIOS setting just to boot a freedos usbkey to reflash the firmware and then reset to uefi again to boot back into the normal system again?

-- mike c

Yes, this is what I have done in the past. I actually I just left UEFI and bios enabled for some time. My computer gives the option of whether to give preference to UEFI or legacy bios if both are present.

Recently, though I turned off legacy bios, though I am not sure why or if I gain anything from it.

-- Curtis Shimamoto sugar.and.scruffy@gmail.com

Yes I had seen about the uefi as first call with legacy as backup option - actually I looked up the firmware update, and there seems to be an option to enable F7 to flash bios from the advanced bios options for my motherboard - and in principle having the bios .bio update file on a uskbey whilst booting with this option enabled should allow a very simple way to update the firmware without further ado, and does not even need a freedos key - just the file on a fat32 partitioned key - I had better start putting the hardware together so I can start doing all this! -- mike c

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archlinux＠jelmail.com
Corrado Primier
Curtis Shimamoto
David Benfell
kristof
LANGLOIS Olivier PIS -EXT
Mike Cloaked
Paul Gideon Dann
Tom Gundersen