On 08/06/15 11:51 PM, Gary Dale wrote:
On 08/06/15 02:24 PM, Arno Schuring wrote:
> Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2015 11:24:20 +0200 > From: geo...@nsup.org > > More precisely: a conforming UEFI firmware MUST be able to read FAT32 > partitions. It CAN be able to read other types: apple's implementation can > read apple's proprietary filesystem. > > If you KNOW that YOUR firmware supports ext2, you can use ext2. More likely, > your firmware only supports FAT32, possibly NTFS. > Ah, I did not know that the EFI spec didn't mandate FAT32 for the ESP. >> Its partition type in gdisk should be EF00, >> and it should be mounted on /boot/efi. > > Not much. It should be mounted there if you want to use grub-install with > the default options, and probably a few other similar tools, but that is > all. Well, default options are default options. Debian tools expect the ESP to be mounted at /boot/efi. That's enough of a "should" for me. Debian has always provided ways to deviate from the default setup, but that doesn't alter the premise. > >> [ESP] is required to be present when using EFI boot. > > This is not true at all. > > When using UEFI boot, you need a bootloader on a supported filesystem in a > supported partition, pointed by the UEFI variables for the menu. The GPT > type of the partition is irrelevant. Yet, the EFI spec only requires the firmware to support FAT32... > You need an UEFI system partition with the precise characteristics if you > want your firmware to GUESS the bootloader to use on the device, without a > boot variable pointing to it. ...and the EFI firmware only looks for bootloaders in a partition of type 0xEF or C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B. That you can find ways to configure your UEFI system to boot without a partition of that specific type doesn't invalidate my statement though. The spec mandates a discoverable partition, and it wouldn't surprise me if half of the firmwares out there would flatly refuse to read files from a partition with the wrong type. >> (which we already knew, as Windows does not support booting in EFI mode >> from an MBR-style disk) > > I am no windows specialist, but I doubt this is true: I have observed a > barely-conforming laptop without BIOS emulation booting a windows 8 recovery > USB stick formated in MBR format. >From https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn336946.aspx: [..] you receive the error message: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is not of the GPT partition style", it's because your PC is booted in UEFI mode, but your hard drive is not configured for UEFI mode. You’ve got a few options: - Reboot the PC in legacy BIOS-compatibility mode. This option lets you keep the existing partition style. [..] - Reformat the drive for UEFI by using the GPT partition style. This option lets you use the PC’s UEFI firmware features. Regards, Arno

Sorry that your e-mail provider has made your last 2 replies unreadable. Anyway, I spent more time playing around with it today. Neither grub-pc nor grub-efi wants to work. The HD shows up in the BIOS boot menu (invoked through F12 while the BIOS is executing) as a legacy boot device whether I have grub-pc or grub-efi installed, while my system rescue CD usb stick shows up in both legacy and UEFI.

I've given up and am reinstalling Jessie using the new 8.1 installer. Hopefully this will result in a bootable system..

Reinstalling didn't work either. Debian 8.1 installer seems to think that I have an EFI system and installs as such, although with grub-pc. I even took the "safe" root and let it install files into the EF02 partition. Still refused to boot. It seemed to not want to boot with a GPT disk.

So I took a look at the system BIOS. Nothing there to suggest a missed setting, so I went to the manufacturer's site and found an updated BIOS. Of course it was a DOS program...

A quick run of unetbootin to create a FreeDOS bootable USB stick, then some fiddling around before it clicked that A: was memory and the USB stick was C:. Finally got the BIOS updated and now the system is booting OK (except that Windows 7 still needs to be fixed).


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