Re: [gentoo-user] SNAFU: TO THE N'TH POWER!

[Mick]

On Saturday 28 Jan 2017 20:24:34 Alan Grimes wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Sat, 28 Jan 2017 12:11:28 -0500, Alan Grimes wrote:
> >
> > It appears to be a 2-stage boot process:
> >
> > BIOS boot -> Binary of GRUB bootstrap loader.
> > You don't have a BIOS with a UEFI system.
>
> We were discussing BIOS boot on a MFT partition scheme, which is what
> I'm using right now.

MFT is a table with file metadata within an NTFS partition:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365230(v=vs.85).aspx

Are you saying you are booting your system by chainloading the gentoo kernel 
(or GRUB) from an NTFS partition, with the MSWindows boot loader?

> > >Boot -> Grub libraries, config, and kernels.
> >
> > The boot manager in the firmware picks an EFI boot image from the ESP,
> > usually sda1. Once it loads that it's job is done. The boot image can be
> > a kernel or a secondary bootloader like GRUB.
> >
> > Really, there is rarely a point in using GRUB on a UEFI system. Any
> > bootloader adds extra complication, GRUB does it in spades. Just use a
> > boot manager like rEFInd or systemd-boot - the latter is the simpler to
> > work with AFAICT.
>
> I would tend to agree with you except I tried booting my kernel with the
> EFI stub loader by copying it to BOOTx64.EFI (the specification has the
> X lower case but actual implementations seem to be case insensitive),
> and the system would lock up. I have no idea what to read into that.

Can you please post the kernel error message?  Build the kernel with debugging 
support initially, to get some meaningful output.  Some things to check while 
troubleshooting it:

- Your Linux filesystem is built in the kernel
- You have also built in your kernel EFI and EFI stub support
- You have specified in your kernel the path to the / partition along with any 
other parameters e.g. CONFIG_CMDLINE="/dev/sda2 rootfstype=btrfs".
- The path to initramfs if you are using one is either specified on the 
CONFIG_CMDLINE as above, or it is built in the kernel itself as a cpio 
archive.
- You have run the efibootmgr command with the right syntax, options and 
parameters and have run it a second time as 'efibootmgr -v' to verify its 
output shows correctly the path to your gentoo kernel image.

> The
> contribution of GRUB is that it makes it easier to change kernel
> parameters without recompiling the kernel.

GRUB, gummiboot/systemd-boot, rEFInd and friends are all practical and 
potentially necessary means of switching between kernels and operating systems 
in a multiboot installation.  Otherwise you have to drop into your OS BIOS 
settings to select a boot image from there, or install and use UEFI shell.

Check the gentoo handbook and wiki pages for more details on this subject and 
post back any questions if something is not clear.
-- 
Regards,
Mick