So it sounds like you've got a rather stale installation which you're trying to update. It's wanting to install systemd for you, which you don't want. Is that correct?

It's not all that stale -- it's only been a week or two since I last updated it. Otherwise, yes. I want to update it but I don't ...

I recently tried doing an "emerge -au world", but I'm running into a problem:

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
(see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by sys-apps/systemd-215-r3
# required by gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon-3.12.2
# required ...

In my experience, GRUB 2 often falls down on more complex setups, with "more complex" being somewhat subjective, but ranging from two to four OSes and up. Basically, when using GRUB 2, you're forced to do one of two things:


Rely on GRUB 2's auto-detection, which usually works well for whatever ...

[...] in EFI mode. In that case, a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) must be present, and it must hold boot program(s) such as GRUB, rEFInd, the Windows boot loader, etc.
srs5694 ... hmmm, so I was wrong above? I ask because Apple's diskutils creates an ESP but the OS doesn't use it, the actual efi ...

Grub2 wants an EF02 partition number.

This is true when booting in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode from a GPT disk; but in EFI/UEFI mode, this partition will be useless. FastTurtle implies that s/he is booting in EFI mode, but the error message from GRUB might indicate a BIOS-mode version of GRUB. (The ...

For clarity: the refind that you installed on the hard drive boots?
When the refind on the hard drive boots it displays an icon for windows (an icon for the sysresccd/usb if inserted) but not one for gentoo?
This is correct, there is no gentoo icon at all, but there is one for windows and ...

For those machines known to have UEFI, is there a way to get the EFI command interpreter?
I suspect it'd have to be copied onto the HDD if it's not already in firmware - I'm sort of spoiled that I do have one machine that has the EFI CLI in firmware (an ia64 box) but the two Core-i series machines ...

I am trying to dual boot windows 8 and gentoo. I have a UEFI laptop, and found this guide: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/UEFI_Dual_boot_with_Windows_7/8 I followed the guide and everything seems to have installed correctly, but my refind won't see my gentoo install. I can use the uefi bootable media ...

It's easiest to install all your OSes in the same boot mode -- that is, all in BIOS mode or all in EFI mode. Mixing them tends to lead to problems, because few boot managers can switch boot modes, meaning you'll need to use the firmware's built-in boot manager to switch OSes, and that's usually ...

As The Doctor says, the path of least resistance is to use something else that explicitly supports EFI-mode booting.

If you're looking for a learning project, though, you can add an EFI-mode boot loader to just about any medium. (Doing it on optical discs is a big pain, though, so I recommend ...

You could try organizing the kernels. For instance:


/boot
/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.3
/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.2
/boot/older
/boot/older/vmlinuz-3.11.2
/boot/older/vmlinuz-3.12.2
/boot/older/vmlinuz-3.12.3


rEFInd won't scan the /boot/older directory, but if you also have either a second rEFInd ...

The symlink may have failed because of driver issues. EFI doesn't recognize symlinks. The rEFInd filesystem drivers try to present symlinks as if they were the linked-to files, but there are some quirks. For instance, there are (at least) two different ways to find a file's size in EFI. When done on ...

By design, recent versions of rEFInd should ignore symbolic links. The reason is that many distributions set them up to point to specific kernels in the same directory (say, the symlink vmlinuz points to vmlinuz-3.10.0 or vmlinuz-3.12.0), in which case the symlink adds pointless clutter; or they ...

The limit varies depending on system settings. I'm afraid I don't recall the details. I have tested with huge numbers of partitions, though, and some distributions are able to see them all "out of the box" whereas others can't. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I did my tests, and I don't ...

My suggestion is to replace GRUB 2 with something else. IMHO, GRUB 2 is overly-complex and far too difficult to configure. Every other EFI boot loader for Linux is easier to configure, at least when using a distribution like Gentoo that expects users to do much of the work. (Fedora, Ubuntu, and ...

Aligning partitions to 1MB boundaries, though excessive and slightly wasteful, guarantees proper alignment regardless of whether your disk uses 512b or 4Kb sectors.

Where do you guys find these best practices for partitioning? I'm clueless, and genuinely curious.

I'm unaware of a single ...

I don't have complete step-by-step instructions, but it can be done.

To begin, I recommend you read my pages on EFI boot loaders for Linux, and in particular the pages on EFI boot loader principles and EFI boot loader installation. That will give you an understanding of what happens when you boot ...

Also, is it possible to load a 64-bit kernel in a sort of 32-bit mode? That might explain my discrepancy with the grub2 gentoo wiki about not being able to load a 64-bit os with my configuration.

No, a 64-bit kernel will run only on a 64-bit CPU. That said, BIOS-mode GRUB is written in 16-bit ...

So, using gdisk or parted, make a 1-2MB partition and give it type ef02 in gdisk or set "bios_grub on" for that partition in parted. Then open up cfdisk (it will complain about being a gpt disk. just ignore that) and toggle the bootable flag ON for that partition.

Be aware: "that partition" that ...

Yes, but maybe no.

There is a tool known as the X font server (xfs), which does precisely what you want. The trouble is that server-side fonts generally, and xfs specifically, are deprecated. I just checked, and my Gentoo installation doesn't seem to have xfs installed, and I don't see any obvious ...

Is there a way to delete all existing partitions with fdisk regardless of how many there are?

Yes. The "o" option will do this, at least if it's started on an MBR disk. (If you launch fdisk on a GPT disk, it will adjust the protective MBR, but leave the bulk of the GPT data structures intact ...

This works to wipe out the partition table though:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 seek=446 count=64 conv=notrunc of=/dev/sd#

That will wipe out the MBR partition table (and a few bytes into the following sector). This will only damage a GUID Partition Table (GPT), not destroy it. Also, you've begun the ...

I tend to agree that parted is likely to be better than fdisk for this, although sfdisk might be worth considering for some uses. (I've always found it a bit strange, but it might suit your needs.)

I'd also like to bring up another point, related to this:

"DOS partition table" is synonymous with ...

Have you considered avoiding using grub2?
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_stub_kernel

I'd phrase this as a recommendation, not a question. I've tried every EFI boot loader for Linux in existence (or at least, all of them that I know of), and in my experience, GRUB 2 is the most difficult to ...

Some of the replies in this thread relate to GRUB 2, but the thread's title specifies GRUB Legacy. In particular, the BIOS Boot Partition is (AFAIK) used only by GRUB 2, not by GRUB Legacy. Also, the "stock" GRUB Legacy does not support GPT. There are patched versions floating around that do include ...