[mdlug] UEFI Booting

[Jeff Hanson]

I think Grub needs a small special partition at the beginning of the disk
for UEFI.  It's been a while since I set up a UEFI system so I can't
remember the details.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 9:55 PM, A. Zimmer <andrew.zimmer at comcast.net> wrote:

> Most of my machines support UEFI booting but I have disabled this option
> in the BIOS in preference to the "old school" MBR boot method.  However,
> now I would like to begin to move toward using UEFI booting with Linux.
>
> Since UEFI requires the newer GPT disk format, as a first step toward
> this goal I compiled a Linux kernel with the capability to utilize the
> GPT disk format.  (This is accomplished simply by setting
> CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y during kernel configuration.)  My assumption was
> that by adding this capability the kernel would be able to read/write
> both GPT and MBR disks and thus I could experiment with GPT disks while
> still keeping my system on MBR hard drives.  This did not work.  After
> compiling the new kernel it failed to boot because the MBR system disks
> were inaccessible.
>
> Is this the correct behavior when setting CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y?
>
> Is there any way to compile a Linux kernel to have access to both GPT
> and MBR disks simultaneously?  Or is such a setup impossible?
>
> If it can't be done then the only solution would be to copy my current
> system over to a GPT formatted disk and find a way to boot from the GPT
> disk.
>
> Can GNU parted or other tools create GPT partitions using a kernel that
> is not configure to access the GPT format?
>
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