grub2 EFI boot loader internal/external booting

[step21]

if it shows in refit you dont need to bless. But you should check out the refit efi shell

What I thought, just wanted to clarify.

Why cant you build your own grub.efi if necessary on a PC cross compiled, or why cant you install linux on the MacBook Air?

Mmmh, will check out the refit shell if that gives some more info.

1. The only pc I could maybe put a wubi install on (which I did last week) turned out to be a Pentium 4 model that's still 32-bit, and I couldn't find any good guides/how-tos about cross-compiling to 64-bit especially not on ubuntu(I learned that gentoo has cross-dev, but i think it's gentoo specific). I'm not allowed to partition this one, so anything else won't fly. I could install linux on the macbook air, but disk space is very tight for me, so I'd prefer to install in some kind of loop disk like wubi does, so if I need space I can transfer the disk to an external drive or something. I made a 100 MB partition now where I'd like to install grub2-pc but so far this was not succesful, as the ubuntu livecd (which runs) does not include grub2, and wireless needs the windows drivers for ndiswrapper to work, which I couldn't extract yet on my macbook air, cause trying to install grub from the livecd or something seems I inadvertedly overwrote my windows mbr or something (i.e. windows won't boot anymore), so either I have to fix this (but my windows xp cd for some reason refuses to boot) or try on another windows pc, and then transfer the files to my macbook air in some way. This might seem a little weird, but that's how it is. Also, if some dev guy makes changes, running grub-mkimage shouldn't take him long ...

[step21]

UPDATE: not sure if you experienced this one too, but at least on the macbook air after about 2 minutes no more input was accepted which looked like a hang/freeze. However it seems through lots of testing we were able to fix this, Vladimir Serbinenko/phcoder from #grub did the code changes, I did the testing on my macbook air.

This means that now at least I can work inside the grub shell without a time limit. Apple or legacy chainloading and linux loading do not work yet.

So, once it gets merged into grub svn, hopefully some other ppl with never macs can test it.

[pxwpxw]

UPDATE: not sure if you experienced this one too, but at least on the macbook air after about 2 minutes no more input was accepted which looked like a hang/freeze. However it seems through lots of testing we were able to fix this, Vladimir Serbinenko/phcoder from #grub did the code changes, I did the testing on my macbook air.

This means that now at least I can work inside the grub shell without a time limit. Apple or legacy chainloading and linux loading do not work yet.

So, once it gets merged into grub svn, hopefully some other ppl with never macs can test it.

Yes I just saw phcoder's keyboard patch on grub-dev, well done.
Not so far a problem here, but all helps.

[pxwpxw]

What I thought, just wanted to clarify.



Mmmh, will check out the refit shell if that gives some more info.

1. The only pc I could maybe put a wubi install on (which I did last week) turned out to be a Pentium 4 model that's still 32-bit, and I couldn't find any good guides/how-tos about cross-compiling to 64-bit especially not on ubuntu(I learned that gentoo has cross-dev, but i think it's gentoo specific). I'm not allowed to partition this one, so anything else won't fly. I could install linux on the macbook air, but disk space is very tight for me, so I'd prefer to install in some kind of loop disk like wubi does, so if I need space I can transfer the disk to an external drive or something. I made a 100 MB partition now where I'd like to install grub2-pc but so far this was not succesful, as the ubuntu livecd (which runs) does not include grub2, and wireless needs the windows drivers for ndiswrapper to work, which I couldn't extract yet on my macbook air, cause trying to install grub from the livecd or something seems I inadvertedly overwrote my windows mbr or something (i.e. windows won't boot anymore), so either I have to fix this (but my windows xp cd for some reason refuses to boot) or try on another windows pc, and then transfer the files to my macbook air in some way. This might seem a little weird, but that's how it is. Also, if some dev guy makes changes, running grub-mkimage shouldn't take him long ...

If you install ubuntu810 i386 in wubi, I would have thought you could compile grub2 configured --with-platform=efi --target=x86_64 by simply installing build-essential bison and gcc-multilib.
Re the Macbook Air HD space you only need ~5GB for ubuntu compiling.
But I accept you have limitations there - just looking for support.
If you have any test *.efi from the devs you think worth me trying, or anything for inclusion in a grub.efi I could compile, let me know.

[step21]

If you install ubuntu810 i386 in wubi, I would have thought you could compile grub2 configured --with-platform=efi --target x86_64 by simply installing build-essential bison and gcc-multilib.

Well, afaik gcc-multilib just installs gcc and stuff? I tried on x86 but it did not want to compile for x86_64.

Re the Macbook Air HD space you only need ~5GB for ubuntu compiling.
But I accept you have limitations there - just looking for support.

yeah, I have a 5 GB root disk file on my hfs+ partition. however from inside the livecd, as I said I couldn't get grub2 to install yet, so so far it's just an empty file. This is likely just a matter of time and effort (e.g. providing ndiswrapper with the wland driver, then installin grub2) so I guess this might change soonish.

If you have any test *.efi from the devs you think worth me trying, or anything for inclusion in a grub.efi I could compile, let me know.

I attached the latest efi I have, with the fix applied. Maybe just check if it works for you, apart from this one patch there are no changes. (meaning apple loader or loading linux still doesnt't work for me)

[pxwpxw]

Well, afaik gcc-multilib just installs gcc and stuff? I tried on x86 but it did not want to compile for x86_64.
yeah, I have a 5 GB root disk file on my hfs+ partition. however from inside the livecd, as I said I couldn't get grub2 to install yet, so so far it's just an empty file. This is likely just a matter of time and effort (e.g. providing ndiswrapper with the wland driver, then installin grub2) so I guess this might change soonish.

I attached the latest efi I have, with the fix applied. Maybe just check if it works for you, apart from this one patch there are no changes. (meaning apple loader or loading linux still doesnt't work for me)

1. compiling grub2-efi (on Imac8,1 OR Macbook2,1)

Linux im81 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 06:42:44 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid (xubuntu-desktop)

Needs the base libraries and support that come with a standard i386 ubuntu810 install plus multilib for cross compile to x86_64.

The gcc libs -

pxw@im81:~$ aptitude search gcc | grep ^i
i   gcc                             - The GNU C compiler                        
i   gcc-4.3                         - The GNU C compiler                        
i   gcc-4.3-base                    - The GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
i A gcc-4.3-multilib                - The GNU C compiler (multilib files)       
i   gcc-multilib                    - The GNU C compiler (multilib files)       
i A lib64gcc1                       - GCC support library (64bit)               
i   libgcc1                         - GCC support library

All I needed to add were
build-essential subversion bison gcc-multilib
maybe some I missed.

2. Tried your attached grubfix_mod.efi

On imac81 (2GB RAM) works ok.
No timeout in command line grub>

Loads vmlinuz initrd.img
( 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 06:42:44 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux )
Then
grub> boot ... after < 1 sec boot screen goes to black and dies.

As before.

I will post about this and other reports on grub-devel, its all been seen before.

[[LocK]]

Hi,

I'm try to run standalone linux on my MacBook 3,1 with 4GB of ram.

So i put 64bit grub.efi and config files in to \EFI\grub\, rebooted and using lastest version of rEFIt (burned on CD) booted grub.efi and get this:

rEFIt - Booting OS

Starting grub.efi
_

Does anyone manage to run grub-efi on MacBook 3,1 ?

[step21]

I don't know about specifics for macbook 3,1, but basicalls I'd say if you want grub to run linux, just install it with pc-grub (so that it runs in bios emulation moder) until grub has better EFI support, and especially better EFI support for macs, cause Apple sometimes implemented stuff in a non-standard way. Or is there a special reason you need/want to use EFI grub?

[pxwpxw]

Will it load a CD?

Yes, CD or the MBR i.e. using bios compatibility mode only.

[pxwpxw]

Hi,

I'm try to run standalone linux on my MacBook 3,1 with 4GB of ram.

So i put 64bit grub.efi and config files in to \EFI\grub\, rebooted and using lastest version of rEFIt (burned on CD) booted grub.efi and get this:

rEFIt - Booting OS

Starting grub.efi
_

Does anyone manage to run grub-efi on MacBook 3,1 ?

If you pull out a RAM DIMM to drop the RAM below 4GB, grub64.efi will load and load a kernel. But nobody so far has got a kernel to boot and run using grub.efi 64bit for current macs. There are also other problems, needs some serious catch up work in grub-devel.

However, these results have been for later macbook models, yours is the first MacBook3,1 and would be good to try if you feel like reducing your ram temporarily to get another result.

see my previous post -

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=107
grub.efi 64bit bugs.

So there are 3 main issues -

1. 4GB RAM is too much (until the bug is fixed)
2. Can not boot Mac OSX
3. After loading linux, linux wont boot.
(I could load but not boot, any of the debian or ubuntu installer kernels or my installed ubuntu810 )