Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Howdy,

Installing on a nice shiny new Dell laptop which has these new-fangled
UEFI and 4K-sector disks. Never having worked on these things before,
I'm somewhat wary especially as we've had huge threads before on what
to do and not do.

I don't want to rehash all of that all over again (and the info is
somewhat scattered) so I have one simple question:

Is this wiki page accurate and worth following:

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2

--
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 04.01.2012 09:24, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> Howdy,
>
> Installing on a nice shiny new Dell laptop which has these new-fangled
> UEFI and 4K-sector disks. Never having worked on these things before,
> I'm somewhat wary especially as we've had huge threads before on what
> to do and not do.
>
> I don't want to rehash all of that all over again (and the info is
> somewhat scattered) so I have one simple question:
>
> Is this wiki page accurate and worth following:
>
> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2

You tell *me* ... ;-)

As some of you might have noticed I migrated to GRUB2 lately.

My current question:

Does it make sense to convert/move to GPT-style-partitioning on a
current ~amd64 machine? (root-fs on software raid, btw)

I browse through stuff like:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

and wonder ... (maybe some hours of sleep also help).

Filtering my gentoo-user-IMAP-folder only threw up this thread.

--

Additional "problem": this box dual-boots Win7pro.

Have some of you gentoo-users already been there, done that?

Stefan

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

On 07/09/2012 02:19 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
> Additional "problem": this box dual-boots Win7pro.
>
> Have some of you gentoo-users already been there, done that?

This valuable link was posted here recently:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 10.07.2012 03:10, schrieb walt:
> On 07/09/2012 02:19 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>> Additional "problem": this box dual-boots Win7pro.
>>
>> Have some of you gentoo-users already been there, done that?
>
> This valuable link was posted here recently:
>
> http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

Great help, thanks ... *sigh*

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 09.07.2012 23:19, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:

> I browse through stuff like:
>
> http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/
>
> and wonder ... (maybe some hours of sleep also help).
>
> Filtering my gentoo-user-IMAP-folder only threw up this thread.
>
> --
>
> Additional "problem": this box dual-boots Win7pro.

Success so far:

converted sda to GPT, added boot-partition, works fine, gentoo and win7.
Also the mdadm-raids, everything OK.

Problem:

if I also convert sdb to GPT, there is no real MBR left in the system,
which makes my HP Elite 7300 MT fail at booting via BIOS (no newer BIOS
available, as far as I googled).

I could boot from sysresccd and chose "boot from first/second harddisk",
this triggered GRUB2 just fine. Several re-installations from within
chroot succeeded, but the BIOS ignored the GPT-tables, even after
pseudo-activating the protecting MBR etc.

So I went back to MBR on sdb.

Maybe I go the EFI-path in the next days, just for learning.

But I wonder how the migration might look like and work out, especially
with that win7pro on board.

It is still a productive box ... (gentoo way more important than win7, sure)

Stefan

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

> But I wonder how the migration might look like and work out, especially
> with that win7pro on board.
>
> It is still a productive box ... (gentoo way more important than win7, sure)

For anyone else attacking this:

I now have both GRUB2/Gentoo and Win7pro booting via UEFI here.

It *works* so far, still some polishing to do ... but I am quite happy
with the situation. SSD added for /root and /home ... all disks GPT now
(and disabled BIOS-booting completely).

S

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

On 07/13/2012 02:57 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>
>> But I wonder how the migration might look like and work out, especially
>> with that win7pro on board.
>>
>> It is still a productive box ... (gentoo way more important than win7, sure)
>
> For anyone else attacking this:
>
> I now have both GRUB2/Gentoo and Win7pro booting via UEFI here.
>
> It *works* so far, still some polishing to do ... but I am quite happy
> with the situation. SSD added for /root and /home ... all disks GPT now
> (and disabled BIOS-booting completely).

Congratulations :) Just to clarify, you are using the ersatz software
emulator for UEFI because the BIOS is old, is this correct?

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 14.07.2012 01:41, schrieb walt:
> On 07/13/2012 02:57 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>>
>>> But I wonder how the migration might look like and work out, especially
>>> with that win7pro on board.
>>>
>>> It is still a productive box ... (gentoo way more important than win7, sure)
>>
>> For anyone else attacking this:
>>
>> I now have both GRUB2/Gentoo and Win7pro booting via UEFI here.
>>
>> It *works* so far, still some polishing to do ... but I am quite happy
>> with the situation. SSD added for /root and /home ... all disks GPT now
>> (and disabled BIOS-booting completely).
>
> Congratulations :) Just to clarify, you are using the ersatz software
> emulator for UEFI because the BIOS is old, is this correct?

No. The motherboard/system provides both here, BIOS and UEFI.

So I can choose which device (SATA0,1,2,3 ... USB-CDROM ... you name it)
should be tried to boot via BIOS or UEFI. I slowly moved over to only
UEFI now.

I don't how if this UEFI is emulated somehow.

It's a HP Elite 7300 MT machine.

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 14.07.2012 10:57, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:

>>> It *works* so far, still some polishing to do ... but I am quite happy
>>> with the situation.

What has to be polished:

All this migration left quite some traces. I had grub and grub2, the
EFI-stuff now in /boot/efi ... etc ... and now I have the situation
where GRUB2 somehow reads the wrong grub.cfg or something. For example
if I try to toggle using a font (for testing) it doesn't get read at
boot time. Even if I re-announce(?) GRUB2 to UEFI etc.

I can boot gentoo, that's OK, but I think there's too much stuff in boot
now.

I hesitate to remove things so I ask:

if I have that /boot/efi partition mounted, does there have to be
anything grub-related in /boot at all?

I followed this guide, at least in most parts:

https://forums-web1.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7011836.html?sid=eb4f57a5e29f9e03463a4888296c6462

and this doesn't speak of coming from an older installation of grub or
grub2, so it doesn't mentioned cleaning up stuff or something.

In my /boot I have:

efi
grub
grub2

...

which seems odd to me.

And yes, I removed grub-0.9x already.

Grub2, uefi, gpt etc etc
 

Am 14.07.2012 11:25, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:
> Am 14.07.2012 10:57, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:
>
>>>> It *works* so far, still some polishing to do ... but I am quite happy
>>>> with the situation.
>
> What has to be polished:
>
> All this migration left quite some traces. I had grub and grub2, the
> EFI-stuff now in /boot/efi ... etc ... and now I have the situation
> where GRUB2 somehow reads the wrong grub.cfg or something. For example
> if I try to toggle using a font (for testing) it doesn't get read at
> boot time. Even if I re-announce(?) GRUB2 to UEFI etc.

OK, tested things, that grub.cfg gets read.

But as I set

GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64"

there are other modules/features/commands available at boottime, for
example also other/less videomodes, at least here.

(vbeinfo does not exist then, and other things you get when you emerge
grub with GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc". Also booting isos does not work with the
same commands then, no "linux16" command, for example)

I hesitate to re-emerge with "pc" just to get a different screen
resolution at boot-time ... right now everything is working OK for me,
and I rather wait for some feedback here before I go and crash things
again ;-)

There are quite a lot howtos out there, maybe even too much ... with
slight differences ...

Stefan