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Linuxboot, UEFI support

Open Linvydas opened this issue 3 years ago • 16 comments

Are project developers considering adding UEFI or linuxBoot (NERF) support?

Linvydas avatar Aug 17 '20 19:08 Linvydas

I think UEFI support can be added by just providing TianoCore Skulls builds, I think it's not really that hard but I bricked my first X230 doing that so I rather would use ready builds. Also I don't own Corebooted X230 now (I own X230 with standard bios) so I don't know correct compile flags for coreboot and I don't want to mess my device until I will be safe with internal flash using 1vyrain/skulls so I can't provide pull request.

@merge what you think about adding TianoCore builds to repo?

PSzczepanski1996 avatar Sep 11 '20 15:09 PSzczepanski1996

@HoshiYamazaki how did you brick your x230? Couldn't you just reflash with original bios firmware?

nedson avatar Oct 09 '20 19:10 nedson

@HoshiYamazaki how did you brick your x230? Couldn't you just reflash with original bios firmware?

It just doesn't turn on, before I had ability to turn it on but I tried to use external flasher and probably fried the motherboard. Just bad luck. Anyway, I got another X230, so I hope I will be able to use it, but I expect somebody will prepare ready Coreboot+Tianocore builds since I want to use UEFI systems (Windows/Linux/macOS tripleboot).

PSzczepanski1996 avatar Nov 04 '20 15:11 PSzczepanski1996

+1 for adding a Tianocore image.

varac avatar Nov 11 '20 16:11 varac

+1 for Tianocore

Dongerrs avatar Nov 29 '20 19:11 Dongerrs

So if I understand right, a x230 flashed with skulls cannot boot to an UEFI OS ? (that would explain why I can't boot to my existing system after flashing it)

kedare avatar Apr 06 '21 18:04 kedare

I think the default payload is SeaBIOS (MBR) and you would need something like Tianocore to locate EFI on the disk. @Thrilleratplay has scripts to build Skulls. But I don't know much about his scripts. For a small laptop, is there really a benefit to using EFI?

jcholsap avatar Apr 06 '21 20:04 jcholsap

In some use cases UEFI could be usefull: for example for safeboot install. (though, probably heads would be a better option for those scenarios)

qubicrm avatar Apr 10 '21 00:04 qubicrm

@jcholsap skulls has its own build scripts that have shared parts with Thrilleratplay/coreboot-builder-scripts however I try to maintain a generalized pattern to flash internally across different devices. They also use SeaBIOS by default but allow the user to change the configuration. Although, as far as I know, Tianocore is only stable in MrChromeBox's upstream branch and is not suggested for other coreboot devices.

Thrilleratplay avatar Apr 10 '21 01:04 Thrilleratplay

So if I understand right, a x230 flashed with skulls cannot boot to an UEFI OS ? (that would explain why I can't boot to my existing system after flashing it)

Yes, that's true.

I think the default payload is SeaBIOS (MBR) and you would need something like Tianocore to locate EFI on the disk. @Thrilleratplay has scripts to build Skulls. But I don't know much about his scripts. For a small laptop, is there really a benefit to using EFI?

Sure we can benefit from it, especially for Hackintoshes (if you're macOS person), or you have now existing OS installations based on EFI schema on your disk (or disks, since X230 can support two at once, thanks to mSATA).

Anyway, we got "other" solution to the problem, probably osboot (https://osboot.org/) will solve the existing issues (and not only with TianoCore since it provides multiple prebuilt coreboot distributions).

PSzczepanski1996 avatar Apr 20 '21 09:04 PSzczepanski1996

I was also caught a little off guard by the lack of EFI support and had to fix my bootloader after flashing Skulls. Yes, I know it says right there on top of the README that Skulls uses SeaBIOS and thereby implicitly that it doesn't support EFI. But maybe it would still be a good idea to explicitly state it in the guides and suggest to switch to a bootloader that supports legacy BIOS before flashing Skulls.

tickelton avatar Aug 14 '21 12:08 tickelton

+1 for Tianocore :D

yaroze avatar Oct 20 '21 17:10 yaroze

@merge can you please provide TianoCore builds? As I see the osboot maitainer is not working towards it anymore, and I think all we must do is just prepare correct makefile, build it, test it and thats all (?)

PSzczepanski1996 avatar Dec 28 '21 17:12 PSzczepanski1996

+1 for TianoCore. Interested in booting from NVMe without a bootloader

h0m35t4r avatar Jan 08 '22 18:01 h0m35t4r

Hey, is there any update of this?

PSzczepanski1996 avatar Aug 25 '22 06:08 PSzczepanski1996

If anyone is still interested in this @MrChromebox <3 provides a prebuilt TianoCore x230 image (https://www.reddit.com/r/coreboot/comments/yo0cqb/comment/ivbvvek/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) + a nice script to build your own:)

Baitinq avatar Dec 17 '22 12:12 Baitinq