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ulenrich
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Havin_it wrote:
but I'm still wondering what I'm going to encounter next... getting my root partition re-taken by Windows?
I will give bcdedit a go as well (and see if it sticks), but either way it looks like it leaves /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi alone so I can always point at that instead (touch wood).

Win runs a background task monitoring you disk layout: When something is changing - be it you just insert a cdrom - it is diagnosting the boot and refreshing. (This was for sure done three years ago - I am lacking newer experience with windows). It is fairly reasonable for them to refresh copy bootx64.efi then ...

There is a possibility to have a menu in windows (I don't know semantics, but), from there you could re-chainload refind.efi ?
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DONAHUE
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ srs5694
Just updated windows 8 with the windows 8.1 preview.
A revisit to http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#windows to rerun bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi was required.
The command to change refind description has now been refused by both windows 8 and 8.1'
The "bios" boot order has a uefi ssd choice that always boots directly to windows and a "windows boot manager" choice that opens refind.
The "windows boot manager" choice that opens refind becomes the default for booting without entering bios.
The windows 8-gentoo dual boot works perfectly with the minor quibble that the refind default is windows not gentoo.
This is on an asrock motherboard with a hybrid AMI bios and APTIO uefi implemented.
The way that works - refind from windows.
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Havin_it
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ulenrich wrote:
Havin_it wrote:
but I'm still wondering what I'm going to encounter next... getting my root partition re-taken by Windows?
I will give bcdedit a go as well (and see if it sticks), but either way it looks like it leaves /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi alone so I can always point at that instead (touch wood).

Win runs a background task monitoring you disk layout: When something is changing - be it you just insert a cdrom - it is diagnosting the boot and refreshing. (This was for sure done three years ago - I am lacking newer experience with windows). It is fairly reasonable for them to refresh copy bootx64.efi then ...

There is a possibility to have a menu in windows (I don't know semantics, but), from there you could re-chainload refind.efi ?


Interesting... so this is actually Windows behaviour? That's pretty rude, and I'm surprised it hasn't been made more of in the press along with SecureBoot. I'll have to investigate this service and whether I can disable it.

Ultimately, at worst I may have to perform a manual fix every time I've been into Windows, which I can live with I guess (as long as *all* the non-MS files in the ESP don't get eaten) as there's a "Choose an EFI file" option in the F9 menu. It still would be nice not to have to, though.

EDIT: just to mention I did try bcdedit, and it did inject the path to /EFI/gentoo/bootx64 so it's shown under "Windows Boot Manager" by bcdedit /enum /v but this didn't actually affect what got booted :(
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srs5694
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

DONAHUE wrote:
The windows 8-gentoo dual boot works perfectly with the minor quibble that the refind default is windows not gentoo.


You can easily change this via the "default_selection" option in refind.conf. If you're booting Linux kernels directly, you can set the value to "bzImage" or "vmlinuz" (whichever you're using), which will in turn result in the default being the most recent Linux kernel installed, since rEFInd sorts entries within each directory by date and matches the first (sorted) entry found.

Havin_it wrote:
Interesting... so this is actually Windows behaviour? That's pretty rude, and I'm surprised it hasn't been made more of in the press along with SecureBoot. I'll have to investigate this service and whether I can disable it.
ulenrich wrote:
Win runs a background task monitoring you disk layout: When something is changing - be it you just insert a cdrom - it is diagnosting the boot and refreshing. (This was for sure done three years ago - I am lacking newer experience with windows). It is fairly reasonable for them to refresh copy bootx64.efi then ...


I may have lost track of the context, but I thought this was discussing a scenario in which you replaced the Windows bootmgfw.efi file with GRUB, rEFInd, or some other boot manager. It's not really "rude" of Windows to restore its own boot loader over some unauthorized file, since Windows it's supposed to own this file(name). The practice of replace bootmgfw.efi with a Linux boot manager/loader is a desperate last-ditch effort to work around EFI bugs, so if blame is to be placed, that blame should be placed on the EFI vendors who can't seem to properly implement basic functionality that does work in reference implementations.

Havin_it wrote:
Ultimately, at worst I may have to perform a manual fix every time I've been into Windows, which I can live with I guess


I feel compelled to repeat what I wrote earlier:

srs5694 wrote:
Manufacturers will sell us junk if we let them, and all too often, that's precisely what happens. A single return of a computer will cost the manufacturer a significant amount of money, so that's one of the few actions that we can take as consumers to motivate them to create better products.


I strongly advise against keeping a computer that bungles basic EFI functionality to the point that you have to bend over backwards to make it work. It's one thing to use bcfg in an EFI shell instead of efibootmgr, or even to have to remove NVRAM entries and name your boot loader EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi. It's another thing to be forced to manually perform some action every time you boot Windows to keep your chosen boot manager working. If you accept a computer that's broken that badly, you're bending over, posterior exposed, and begging the manufacturer "please, sir, may I have another?".

That said, I would have accepted worse behavior a year or two ago than I do now. EFI started to become common on PCs and motherboards about two years ago, although most systems still booted in BIOS mode. A year ago, the switch to default EFI-mode booting began, and then accelerated vastly a short while later with the release of Windows 8. By now, manufacturers should have fixed these problems. If they haven't, it's because they think that users of non-Microsoft OSes aren't important enough to merit fixing a major bug in their firmware. In my book, that kind of disrespect shouldn't be tolerated.
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DONAHUE
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

no quibble now, got fascinated with the menu examples at the bottom of the page missing default_connection and its very lucid directions for use.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 10:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Returning the box isn't a luxury I really have time for I'm afraid, I need a machine to work on now; the time lost already has cost me.

OK, I can acknowledge it's reasonable for MS to look after its own boot files, the real. problem I guess is the firmware giving me no options to modify its own boot -menu order (which is obviously hidden from direct meddling by any means. at my disposal) .
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nix213
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could try experimenting w/ grub4dos to load linux from the windows partition. According to what I've read, it could work if your computer supports a "BIOS emulation" (UEFI disabled?) boot mode. I've got that running on another (Win XP) partition, just for the sheer joy of being able to chain-load linux & windows back & forth :lol:
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srs5694
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 4:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nix213 wrote:
You could try experimenting w/ grub4dos to load linux from the windows partition. According to what I've read, it could work if your computer supports a "BIOS emulation" (UEFI disabled?) boot mode. I've got that running on another (Win XP) partition, just for the sheer joy of being able to chain-load linux & windows back & forth :lol:


If the computer boots in EFI mode, GRUB4DOS will be useless, since GRUB4DOS is an exclusively BIOS-mode boot loader. An EFI with a CSM (which provides a BIOS/legacy boot mode) could run GRUB4DOS or any other BIOS-mode boot loader, but not once the EFI boot path is already started, unless a boot manager supports switching boot modes. To the best of my knowledge, only rEFInd and the boot managers built into many EFIs can do this.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My silence over the last 24hrs has been due to Windows's latest outrage: "Fast Startup" [aka Fast Boot]. It turns out that while I thought I was shutting down Win8, I was actually just putting it into "deep sleep" where it left a bunch of state data -- oh, and HDD write buffers -- in RAM for Gentoo to hose over in the meantime :? Words fail me.

The result was that eventually Win8 got stuck in a reboot loop and had to be restored, which thankfully left the partitions alone, but just wasted even more time.

Hopefully with that dealt with, things might remain a little more sane. It's obvious that the HP firmware is doing something additional to keep Win8 at the top spot in the F9 menu, but with a bit of luck maybe the current setup will remain reasonably stable from here on in. Watch this space...
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