first steps with UEFI

[djemos]

You did not do something odd. Take a look at elilo package and you will see that the extra .efi files (elilo-x86_64.efi, elilo-ia32.efi) installed in /boot

[laprjns]

You did not do something odd. Take a look at elilo package and you will see that the extra .efi files (elilo-x86_64.efi, elilo-ia32.efi) installed in /boot

Yes this is true, but mimosa said that he has the elilo-x86_64.efi file along with the elilo.efi file in his EFI/Salix and EFI?Salix_sda5 directories on the ESP. When eliloconfig is executed, it copies the elilo-x86_64.efi file in /boot to the appropriate ESP directory (EFI/Salix) and renames it to elilo.efi. It also copies vmlinuz, and if needed the initrd,gz file. So he did somehow manage to copy the extra .efi files in to the ESP directories.

[mimosa]

ReFind doesn't seem to be in the repositories. Wouldn't this be a rather useful thing to include? I know it's on SBo, but without the Salix theme.

I have never tried to do this, but for someone who wanted to dual boot with Windows (as is common for newbies), aren't they going to need something like reFind?

In fact, it would be very helpful to bring together in one place the information that would be needed by someone wishing to do that, perhaps in a wiki page, and preferably in a way that doesn't require the CLI. I am happy to write it up but at the moment, not sure myself just how to go about it.

I personally am booting with reFind at the moment, and it works perfectly, including for booting from USB.

[mimosa]

I recently helped someone install Salix to dual boot with Windows, and reFind is defintely the most practical way to do so. With Guefi, as far as I can tell, you can boot Windows again, but then to boot Linux, you would have to use a Live USB, possibly chroot into your Salix installation, and run efibootmgr. This is hardly practical for newbies, or for anyone wanting to alternate freely between both OSs.

So shouldn't the reFind package (with Salix decorations) be included in the repositories?

[laprjns]

ok, ok ok i'll try to get to it this weekend

[laprjns]

Salix themed rEFInd package has been submitted. In the mean time you can get it here:
http://people.salixos.org/laprjns/refind/0.10.3/

[mimosa]

I had rEFInd 0.10.2 installed and it was working well, however an spi update has replaced it with the new 0.10.3, and it gives this error at boot:

refind.conf's 'scanfor' line specifies scanning for one or more legacy (BIOS) boot options; however, this is not possible because your computer lacks the necessary Compatibility Support Module (CSM) support or that support is disabled in your firmware.

I am still then able to boot Salix, but a friend who is dual booting with Windows is not. I see a smaller and blurrier version of the normal refind options screen, after dismissing the BIOS error message.

As a temporary fix, I've reinstalled the earlier package:

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wget http://people.salixos.org/laprjns/refind/0.10.2/refind-0.10.2-x86_64-1rl.txz
sudo spkg --reinstall refind-0.10.2-x86_64-1rl.txz

and added it to excluded packages in GSlapt (Edit ->Preferences -> Excludes; Add "^refind"). Everything now works perfectly again.

[laprjns]

I made some changes to the refind.conf file for the 0.10.3 packages and apparently I made some bad assumptions.
One of the changes to the configuration file is that I have added the option to scan for BIOS boot loaders. Apparently, if the CMS option is not enable, then rEFInd throws the error that you saw. I would have tough that if rEFInd found that the legacy boot wasn't supported then it would treat it as if there was no BIOS boot loaders detected. This just points out that my test regiment was inadequate. The fix for this problem will result in rEFind only detecting UEFI boot loaders. If someone does want to have it detect BIOS boot loaders, then they will need to manually edit the refind,conf file.

The resolution problem that you mention is again a poor choice on my part. I made some changes form the default configuration that did work on my computers, but does seem to be the best choice for all.

I will submit a new packages that addresses these problem, but before I do this I would like to know more about your friends problem. Can you give me more information on what exactly is and is not happening compared how the 0.10.2 package works on your friends computer.

[mimosa]

I have asked, and also suggested he join the forum. Hopefully he will reply soon.

[laprjns]

I have submitted a new package which addresses the legacy boot message and the video resolution issues. The new package will essential behave like the 0.10.2 package. Note that if you are running your UEFI in CMS mode and you want rEFInd to scan for and present boot options for legacy bios installs, the you will need to edit (as root) the refind.conf file in the refind directory of the ESP partition. To do this find and remove the # symbol from the beginning of this line in the refind.conf file found in /boot/efi/EFI/refind/"

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# scanfor internal,external,optical,manual,hdbios,biosexternal