Re: [arch-releng] My archiso TODO/ideas (_draft_)

On 08/11/2011 12:47 PM, KESHAV P.R. wrote:

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 04:54, Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi wrote:

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On 08/10/2011 02:18 AM, Pierre Schmitz wrote:

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On Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:43:09 -0300, Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi wrote:

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* UEFI boot support (FS#20419) At some time I want to support UEFI boot. But I do not have any real hardware to test it. Neither UEFI firmware for qemu (two versions tested) or virtualbox works fine, testing with some UEFI compatible mediums without happy results. What was the exact problem with QEMU and VBox UEFI firmware? Both use Tianocore UDK/EDK2 OVMF firmware https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=OVMF_FAQ . Hello,

Problem is that is slow in all steps: POST, loading kernel+initramfs, booting kernel (tested some time ago, one or two months, maybe these things changed recently), and finally crash or nothing. Sometimes virtualbox and qemu crash, etc. Mediums tested (what I remember): Fedora 15, Archboot 2011.06, Scientific Linux 6.0.

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No need to hurry here. Afaik UEFI and linux (or UEFI in general) has quite some problems and regressions over the default BIOS boot. I have such hardware, but what the bug report does not mention is that it works pretty fine without any downsides without it. Not with Linux 3.0 . Might want ot read http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/ . OK, I will test with it. Yes these are the articles that I read :)

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I read some weeks ago that some UEFI implementations always/only read a "default" location in UEFI partitions, assuming that the only OS that will be used is Windows, breaking the "ecosystem" under /EFI directory. The location you are btalking about is /efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Windows by default copies/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi incase the UEFI NVRAM entry fails to boot . I currently have grub2 as the bootx64.efi file and added a chainloading entry for bootmgfw.efi ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting#Chainloading%20Windows%20x86_6... ) . Yes, and also (Windows) put a fallback entry in the default location. So if the UEFI implementation does not set variables correctly., there is no other choices on that systems. :( You can have a look at Archboot iso for ideas on implementing UEFI support. For generating iso, you need to use xorriso (from libisoburn) (not cdrkit mkisofs). But implementing bootloader support in the aif script is a much bigger task. I can help you with implementing UEFI support in archiso but right now I am too busy to hack on aif . Or using original cdrecord mkisofs. The cdrkit is a museum piece! ;) For UEFI firmware chainloaded from BIOS (real hardware testing) checkout www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/index.html .

Cool! Anyway when I talk about real hardware I also talk about what vendors are doing bad when implementing things (Like ACPI issues, many ACPI are Windows friendly only).

Regards.

Many many thanks!

Keshav

-- Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi \cos^2\alpha + \sin^2\alpha = 1