Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Grub1: Cant ? Re: keeping grub 1

[Fernando Rodriguez]

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 11:06:25 PM Mick wrote:
> On Thursday 27 Aug 2015 21:03:19 Fernando Rodriguez wrote:
> > On Thursday, August 27, 2015 8:44:07 PM Mick wrote:
> > > On Thursday 27 Aug 2015 20:30:17 Grant Edwards wrote:
> > > > On 2015-08-27, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
> > > > > Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > > > >> For those of us with multiple Linux installations on a disk, that's
> > > > >> a pretty big reason to stick with grub-legacy.
> > > > >
> > > > > So you are saying (trying to read the 'tea leaves' here) that
> > > > > grub legacy ( grub-static-0.97-r12) will work  well on a 64 bit
> > > > > systems,
> > > >
> > > > I still use it on all my 64-bit machines.
> > > >
> > > > > (u)efi with say multiple drives (> 2T) and Raid-1 configs like
> > > > > btrfs-native or via lvm?
> > > >
> > > > I haven't started using UEFI boot mode mode yet, so I don't know how
> > > > thetwo grub's compare.
> > >
> > > UEFI do not need GRUB{1,2} or any other boot manager.  They can boot any
> > > kernel you drop in the EFI boot partition directly, as long as you set
it
> > > up so.  It becomes cumbersome if you are planning to multiboot various
> > > kernels
> >
> > &
> >
> > > OS frequently.
> >
> > You do need a manager like efibootmgr unless you have a really good "bios"
> > menu where you can manage your entries. Only removable media is
> > autodetected on all EFI boxes I've seen. I use GRUB2 because my efi
> > firmware (like most) is really buggy. Changing the boot order doesn't work
> > at all (neither on the menu nor through efibootmgr), so I have to delete
> > and recreate the entries in the right order. What I did is create 2 efi
> > entries, one for my main kernel and one for grub2 and I added entries for
> > all my secondary kernels and windows on the grub2 menu.
>
> Interesting ... here I had no such problems on an EUFI Asus MoBo.  I have a
> number of kernels (up to six last time I looked) and I can change the boot
> order with 'efibootmgr -o <numberA>,<numberB>,...,<numberZ>'

I didn't mean  that all or most have that specific bug. But a  lot of them are 
really buggy. Some have case sensitive FAT drivers, or unusual filename length 
limits, or will only boot a specific filename like boot.efi. One has come up on 
this list a couple times with gummyboot that will ignore some entries 
seemingly at random which I would bet is a firmware bug.

efibootmgr -o seems to work for me, running efibootmgr again shows that the 
order has been updated but it is not persisted and when I reboot the previous 
default entry still boots. The --bootnext option does work for me when I need 
to boot a different entry just once.

-- 
Fernando Rodriguez