Re: [gentoo-user] Bootloaders: SILENT CRISIS!!!

[Mick]

On Saturday 28 Jan 2017 12:20:12 Tom H wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 5:50 PM, Bill Kenworthy <billk@×××××××××.au> wrote:
> > On 28/01/17 00:25, Tom H wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 7:10 PM, Bill Kenworthy <billk@×××××××××.au>
wrote:
> >>> I tried grub2 and dumped it for "rEFit" - ended up a lot easier and
> >>> more robust.
> >>
> >> rEFIt or rEFInd?
> >
> > Sorry, yes it is rEFInd I am using.
>
> No worries. I had to check out of curiosity because I mix them up...

rEFInd is definitely a slick and useful boot manager for multibooting.  On this 
occasion I did not install it, but decided to remain minimalist, because I do 
not want to interfere much with the AppleMac installation.

So, I created /boot/EFI/LINUX/ on /dev/sda1, leaving the original 
/boot/EFI/APPLE as was and copied in the LINUX/ directory just the gentoo 
kernel image, .config and System files.  I named the kernel image 
'bootx64-4.4.39-gentoo.efi' to differentiate from other images I will install 
over time.

Then using the efibootmgr I set up bootx64-4.4.39-gentoo.efi as the default boot 
kernel and when the MackBook is started it boots straight into Gentoo, in what 
it feels like milliseconds.  :-)

When I need to boot into MacOS I have to press the alt key (aka Option ⌥  key) 
as I power it on and the Apple firmware boot loader takes over.  What I don't 
know yet is if a MacOS upgrade will wipe the /boot/EFI/LINUX/ in /dev/sda1 as 
it upgrades the APPLE files, but it is easy to boot with a LiveUSB and copy 
over the Linux kernel once more.

This way I don't have to bless a hfs+ partition, or mess about with the MacOS 
firmware files, bootx64.efi, or anything else.  I wonder why Apple did not 
develop their boot manager to be able to identify and boot Linux kernels too, 
but are happy to make it boot MSWindows ...

-- 
Regards,
Mick