Installed Gentoo on EFI?

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:48 pm Post subject: Installed Gentoo on EFI?

Another curiosity poll.

Have you installed Gentoo on an EFI/UEFI system?

While it appears Gentoo doesn't "support" UEFI, there's no reason why it can't be used.

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/UEFI_Gentoo_Quick_Install_Guide

Just wondering how many people have attempted EFI installs? Or against EFI so much that you'd refuse to use it ever?

I've been trying to install a UEFI32 system, and it's been a PITA. If it had been a regular PC (it's a tablet) or supported 64-bit, I'm sure it would have been a lot easier and well supported... or if it supported MBR I'd already have a working system on it...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

platojones · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:52 pm Post subject:

I've had it installed on a UEFI system for nearly 3 years now. Using grub2 as the boot loader, dual-boot with Windoze 7. It was a wicked learning curve and it's a very fiddly process, but once it's in, it just works. I wasn't aware that Gentoo didn't support it, though. Works well for me.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

I've done it twice. Once on a Lenovo laptop with rEFInd and once on a custom built desktop with no extra boot loader at all. Both times where really straight forward.

No bootloader was the easiest by far. Just drop the kernel image in /boot/EFI/Boot and update the EFI vars so it knew that it existed and it booted the first time. REFInd required some playing around to get it to work as desired.
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:04 pm Post subject:

The only successful EFI install I've done is on my ia64 box and this was before the EFI stub was available - so I was forced to use elilo (Linux 2.6.20ish, well before full UEFI support). I don't even know if the EFI stub works on ia64 or not at this point...
I don't even think efivars was supported then either, but fortunately the EFI shell and the firmware had ways to edit the menu without OS support, so in that respect getting elilo to autoload on powerup was not a problem.

Actually I do wonder, because ia64 was a supported architecture, that wiki page is wrong... EFI is the only way to boot at least my ia64 box...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

When I replaced my computer to the current one, I was able to do EFI. Before, I was forced to do only MBR as the computers didn't support EFI. I still have a couple computers that won't support EFI ever (pre Ghz CPU's, and one that is pre 64-bit system).

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:19 am Post subject:

I'm surprised nobody has anti-EFI sentiment yet...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I can't complain about EFI, as once I got it working; it works like a charm and never have to worry about it since (I had less issues when I first tried EFI than what I had with grub2). Now, if you want to get into get into Secure Boot, I'm game for being anti-Secure Boot.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

apieum · n00b Joined: 18 Dec 2014 Posts: 9

Hi all,
I'm new on this forum, so why not start with an easy trolling topic (after all, why leaving a good impression).

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

apieum · n00b Joined: 18 Dec 2014 Posts: 9

Levns · n00b Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7

szczerb · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 12:10 pm Post subject:

Not enough options in the poll. I attempted, but didn't succeed in a short time. Had to get the computer going, as I had work to do, so switched to legacy.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 12:41 pm Post subject:

I've never used efi, but don't hate it or think it's bad. So didn't vote.
_________________
PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 2:54 pm Post subject:

Giving up and using legacy, or not using it because too lazy I think still fits under the "No, MBR forever/EFI is devil spawn" - I should have voted this option on my EFI capable laptop, but since I did do a EFI install on ia64 I'm shoving this fact under the rug... (Technically the laptop is still using EFI but EFI is chainloading MBR/legacy to boot Gentoo.)

I set this poll to be timed so next time if it comes around you've got it and can go vote 'yes'!

(I was curious about EFI as this is one of the pieces of software out there that adds complexity out there or at least was a fairly large paradigm shift, putting a lot more stuff in preboot... At least postboot things still look exactly the same as before, save secure boot, which means it didn't really buy that much.)
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

szczerb · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:42 pm Post subject:

It would quite harsh if I called it the spawn of evil after not being able to boot for like 20 minutes. With dumb mistakes it took me longer to get normal MBR hardware to boot

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:14 pm Post subject:

I still haven't gotten this (@&()$%@ thing working and about to call it devilspawn myself... I'm sure it'll boot just fine if it supported MBR/legacy boot.

I'm pretty sure it's a kernel issue at this point, the firmware only supports UEFI-i386. To give credit to where it's due, I can see it running rEFInd and Grub2 just fine (secure boot is off) but the kernel hangs after load.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:35 pm Post subject:

eccerr0r,

If the kernel loads and starts to decompress, UEFI has done its job.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:50 pm Post subject:

I see it trying to load (rEFInd or using the built-in loader)... it prints nothing to the screen afterwards (rEFInd case) or screen is completely black (using stub only from the built-in loader).

Either the EFI handoff to kernel code didn't happen because it didn't load properly (could be a bug in UEFI that it won't load a huge .efi file?), or the kernel doesn't know how to start running on this system. Hard to tell which unfortunately as I don't see any more text.

I really need to get Grub2 totally working, as this is a different codepath to get the kernel running...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

avx · Advocate Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Posts: 2152

No problems with (U)EFI itself so far, rEFInd works very well. Only problem I've got is that I want to drop rEFInd, too, but I didn't get the kernel to boot without it.

If someone would like to help with this, system in question is Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga (latest firmware according to Lenovo's site), kernel is gentoo-sources 3.18.1, EFI stub is enabled, needed parameters are included via built-in commandline. I put the kernel on the ESP and used `efibootmgr` to create an entry pointing to it. In the bootmenu, the entry shows up, but on selection, the screen goes blank for ~half a second and then returns to the selection menu. (same kernel without changes works via rEFInd)
_________________
++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

khayyam · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:18 pm Post subject:

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:39 pm Post subject:

The problem with my particular machine is that it's a tablet, and as far as I know, nobody has gotten Linux to work on this particular machine yet as it was recently placed on the market (it's a "Bay Trail" x86 SOC, so at least the hardware is not super new, but not 'well-hacked' in any respect). I have no Ethernet or other ports to test - just the screen. I was able to find the wifi driver but it's not in the kernel tree and I'm sure I'll need a few rounds of debugging that too.

As it's an Intel Gen 7 graphics, I don't know how well kernel support works. I think I have all the EFI settings right to start using EFIFB, which I would hope that it would not change video modes and simply use the EFI routines for early printks. Unfortunately I don't get any printks to come through - when I get the kernel to run through rEFInd it's as if it spinlocks - there's absolutely no graphics mode changes. Booting it raw straight from EFI the screen clears and stays black, but the firmware may have done this too...

I'll need to make sure that I don't have intelfbdrm load on boot, but even if it did, the initial printks should show up through EFI if the EFIFB was working properly...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

avx · Advocate Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Posts: 2152

EmaRsk · Apprentice Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 158 Location: Italy

I installed Gentoo on my Thinkpad, and Debian Wheezy on a Vaio, both of them with UEFI to allow a dualboot with Windows.
I tried Extlinux, but I didn't get it to work. I also tried Grub but I hate it, and it didn't work either. I settled on rEFInd.