EFI Install

[X5-655]

Just whiped out my HD.. I hope I did this right, cause my Compaq laptop has EFI (I was using an EFI loader and had numerous problems with power management)..

Format HD as GPT. Create 200MB FAT32 partition at begining of drive, mark it as EFI System Partition, have Ubuntu installer use largest free space, and install bootloader to SDA1 (the FAT32 partition).

it's installing right now.. I hope that works, I tried searching on how-to's that is NOT an intel mac, but found nothing..

[X5-655]

nope didn't work.. upon boot it couldn't find a bootable device..

[naelq]

wow!! i've just found your thread regarding booting EFI (which was posted about an hour ago )
take a look at this: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...efi-shell.html

btw, & in case you wonder, i have a macbook (with EFI) which i use rEFIt & grub..
the reason i was looking for info regarding EFI is that i want to use it with my new XEON setup. why? simply because the MoBo (S3420GPLC) supports it

please update your progress, & i will update with mine, but 1st i have some backups to do..

Nael

[X5-655]

I actually after countless attempts, found that HP disabled unsigned EFI code on the Compaq cause they aren't the EliteBook.. But I can use GPT atleast without problem, which is good, but sucks an EFI loader won't work..

There seems there may be a trick for me though, put grub2.efi in the HP_TOOLS partition, which is the EFI partition on this laptop..

[oldfred]

Grub2 seems to be just now making improvements in using efi to boot.

grub EFI
http://www.mail-archive.com/maverick.../msg01724.html
OP installs gpt with gdisk
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1563699

[X5-655]

I actually setup a GPT disk with both GParted and Gnome Disk Utility.. It works, but my laptops EFI is denying GRUB2, "Unsigned".. It sees it, it puts grub2.efi in HP_TOOLS which is a marked EFI System Partition at the begining of the disk, but in the end it seems to boot to this odd partition: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...dpartition.png

[oldfred]

My gpt install on sdb looks like yours (but without boot partition as I only have MBR BIOS.

http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition
"unknown" filesystem! may be shown

It seems that many tools are not totally updated for gpt so they just show unknown.

I do not know if you can have the bios_grub partition be the efi boot partition or not. The efi partition is the one that the efi boot loader will use for booting , but I do not know if you can let grub put its files in that also.

[oldfred]

Since you have space in your Ubuntu install, I would shrink it by 20-25GB for another ext4 partition and just install the latest Maverick. They just came out with a new beta today, so it may be worth testing.

[srs5694]

http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition
"unknown" filesystem! may be shown

It seems that many tools are not totally updated for gpt so they just show unknown.

GNU Parted, GParted, and similar tools look inside partitions to identify the filesystems they contain. A BIOS Boot Partition, however, contains no filesystem; it contains raw boot code used by GRUB 2. (At least, this is true once GRUB 2 is fully installed; you can of course put a filesystem on the partition, but this will break GRUB 2 if it's already been installed, and if you re-install GRUB 2, doing so will destroy the filesystem.) Thus, the identification of a BIOS Boot Partition as "unknown" has nothing to do with the fact that the disk is GPT, except insofar as a BIOS Boot Partition is a GPT partition type with no exact MBR equivalent. Rather, it has to do with the fact that libparted doesn't (yet?) know how to identify the GRUB 2 boot code that goes in the BIOS Boot Partition. GNU Parted does identify the partition's type by reporting it as having the "bios_grub flag" set.

I do not know if you can have the bios_grub partition be the efi boot partition or not. The efi partition is the one that the efi boot loader will use for booting , but I do not know if you can let grub put its files in that also.

Since the BIOS Boot Partition ("bios_grub" flag set in GNU Parted) is used without a filesystem for storing GRUB 2 boot code, and since the EFI System Partition (ESP) is used by EFI with a FAT-32 filesystem for storing EFI files, the two cannot be the same partition. What's more, GNU Parted's method of identifying these partitions (with "flags") obscures the fact that they have different partition type codes. Each partition can have just one type code ("flag" in GNU Parted parlance), so a partition may be flagged as being of one of these types at most. (There are other type codes, too, of course -- see the "Partition Type GUIDs" table on the Wikipedia entry for GPT for details.

The BIOS Boot Partition is used by GRUB 2 on BIOS-based systems. I have no idea if GRUB 2 requires this partition on EFI-based systems. Creating such a partition will do no harm, so if you're installing on an EFI-based system, you might as well create this partition.

[Skaperen]

I find parted an ugly program that sometimes does very comical things. I have found a program called gdisk that works better because it works just like fdisk which I am already familiar with. I'll be using gdisk until I finally get around to writing my own partitioning utility.