Hello Gerrit!

13 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Maurice Kinal:

meanwhile uefi works fine for me and is actually easier to set up and maintain, so I use it on all new machines now.

Really? It took 4 or 5 days until i got my fido server up and running again. The only task i wanted to do was to move the system from a 4TB disk to a 2TB disk. To reduce the partition sizes i created the target tables from a rescue boot and rsync'd the files to their destinatitions. The partition layout was the same but with differnt size and the system failed to boot.

I'm not sure that understood anything but i looks like uefi is a mini grub within the bios. The boot device is added to the uefi boot list by uuid.

If you replace a disk on the same sata port with a newly formated disk of the same layout the boot will fail because the uuid are different.

This failure will repeat for any file based restore within grub and within the system itself because after grub the uuid of the initrd and in the /etc/fstab will not match any more.

I've no idea what the final correct solution was. Finally i was so p'd off that i dd'd the whole partitions sda1/sda2... to the new destination. I think that would kept the uuid intact and after three successful reboots i put my hands of the running systems.

I can't see the improvement there. To keep a track of the activ uuids i started to record blkid output into fstab.

The best improvement was to make use of my pxe server for the rescue boots. Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Gerrit!

20 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

I thought so too and i do have sda1 /boot/efi and sda3 /boot. But

/boot/efi is empty.

Is there an entry in fstab for it?

Yes.

Maybe it is just not mounted?

Acc to mount and lsblk, no, it is mounted.

The BIOS will detect the EFI parition and start what is
available there.

Wouldn't that add a third place to manage boot partitions?
There is the boot priority list in the bios and the boot manager
grub.

The BIOS lists the bootable EFI partitions it found.

None. I think the BIOS is on csm then.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Kai!

20 May 22 23:51, Kai Richter wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

/boot/efi is empty.

Is there an entry in fstab for it?

Yes.

Maybe it is just not mounted?

Acc to mount and lsblk, no, it is mounted.

And it's empty? So you have no EFI bootcode installed then.

The BIOS lists the bootable EFI partitions it found.

None. I think the BIOS is on csm then.

If there is no bootloader on the EFI partition as you wrote above, there is nothing the BIOS could find.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 1:26PM up 59 days, 18:32, 8 users, load averages: 0.70, 0.47, 0.39

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: We are a nation (2:240/12)

Hello Gerrit!

20 May 2022 13:01, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

I thought so too and i do have sda1 /boot/efi and sda3 /boot. But
/boot/efi is empty.

then efi is not installed with grub ?

Is there an entry in fstab for it?

uefi cant read fstab

Maybe it is just not mounted?

+1

Otherwise, have a look at the output of gdisk (or a similar tool) to locate your efi partition.

+1

The BIOS will detect the EFI parition and start what is available
there.

Wouldn't that add a third place to manage boot partitions?
There is the boot priority list in the bios and the boot manager
grub.

both can use same data, if needed

The BIOS lists the bootable EFI partitions it found. Mine typically
look like this:

-+-
~# l /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 139264 May 5 18:55 BOOTX64.EFI
-+-

if installed via grub

This is the default naming scheme that should always work. For
everything else, you might have to set up boot environment variables (usually, efibootmgr is your friend there).

good


Regards Benny

... too late to die young :)

--- Msged/LNX 6.1.2 (Linux/5.17.9-gentoo-dist (x86_64))
* Origin: gopher://fido.junc.eu/ (2:230/0)

Hello Benny!

22 May 22 11:18, Benny Pedersen wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

Is there an entry in fstab for it?

uefi cant read fstab

No, but the system can, and he wants to check it.

The BIOS lists the bootable EFI partitions it found. Mine typically
look like this:

-+-
~# l /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 139264 May 5 18:55 BOOTX64.EFI
-+-

if installed via grub

Also when installed it manually. Even for FreeBSD. This is the default naming scheme from the EFI standard. It has nothing to do with any particular boot manager.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 3:50PM up 60 days, 20:56, 8 users, load averages: 1.47, 0.75, 0.55

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: We are a nation (2:240/12)

Hello Gerrit!

21 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

If there is no bootloader on the EFI partition as you wrote above,
there is nothing the BIOS could find.

I does find the disk. My first step was to remove the old disk and install a fresh system until ready to boot. It did and i removed the new disk to re-attach the old one. Then no boot anymore. The old disk on the same port in place of the new disk did not boot. I think that's because the bios does use some ID flags to identify the disk to boot of. I never noticed that kind of behavior on legacy systems.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hey Kai!

It did and i removed the new disk to re-attach the old one. Then
no boot anymore.

I have the identical issue between nvme and sata. On legacy it was never an issue and usually F11 ... or F12 ... on bootup would allow one to change from the default boot disk. With UEFI it has been hit and miss but usually I can get sda to boot up if nvme fails to be seen which can and does happen.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Ne byð þæt fele freond, se þe oþrum facn heleð.
He who harbours treachery against another is not a faithful friend.
--- GNU bash, version 5.1.16(1)-release (x86_64-lilmikii-linux-gnu)
* Origin: Little Mikey's Brain - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001)

Hello Kai!

22 May 22 02:24, Kai Richter wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

If there is no bootloader on the EFI partition as you wrote above,
there is nothing the BIOS could find.

I does find the disk.

Does it just find "the disk", or does it present it as EFI-bootable option?

new disk to re-attach the old one. Then no boot anymore. The old disk
on the same port in place of the new disk did not boot. I think
that's because the bios does use some ID flags to identify the disk
to boot of. I never noticed that kind of behavior on legacy systems.

For being EFI-bootable, the installation will need an EFI-partition with boot loader. Your description said your EFI partition was empty (no bootlader). This will not be recognised as bootable by the BIOS (of course).Maybe it was booting legacy before, and you changed the BIOS setting to EFI only?


Regards,
Gerrit

... 7:21AM up 61 days, 12:27, 8 users, load averages: 0.17, 0.37, 0.48

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: And the pastiche we've invented (2:240/12)

Hello Maurice!

22 May 22 22:44, Maurice Kinal wrote to Kai Richter:

I have the identical issue between nvme and sata. On legacy it was
never an issue and usually F11 ... or F12 ... on bootup would allow
one to change from the default boot disk.

Interestingly, this never worked reliably for me, neither with MBR nor with UEFI. The only safe way is to change BIOS boot order settings.

On the bright side, UEFI does reliably come with a shell (if everything else fails) that allows starting other systems manually.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 10:48AM up 61 days, 15:54, 8 users, load averages: 0.53, 0.62, 0.56

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: Shock to the System (2:240/12)

Hey Gerrit!

Interestingly, this never worked reliably for me, neither with MBR
nor with UEFI. The only safe way is to change BIOS boot order
settings.

That precludes that the bios recognizes the disk and presents itself as a bootable disk, which in this case is having issues with the nvme disk. Currently the only repeatable, reliable boot disk is the sata interface.

Also, while I am at it, the 16 boot penguins on a 4k monitor still requires work.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Se ðe ear gifeð and eft oftihð... bysmer he gewyrceð.
He who gives and takes it back again does a shameful thing.
--- GNU bash, version 5.1.16(1)-release (x86_64-lilmikii-linux-gnu)
* Origin: Little Mikey's Brain - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001)

Hello Gerrit!

23 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

I does find the disk.

Does it just find "the disk", or does it present it as EFI-bootable option?

Just the disk. I'm not sure if i recognize an efi boot option. The disk is listed in the boot options by its part or model nummer.

For being EFI-bootable, the installation will need an EFI-partition
with boot loader. Your description said your EFI partition was empty
(no bootlader). This will not be recognised as bootable by the BIOS
(of course).Maybe it was booting legacy before, and you changed the
BIOS setting to EFI only?

No. With this knowledge i would say that i did boot on legacy mode always. And i still do. I'm sorry to blame efi for that because it can't be a fault of efi if efi is not used. But my perception is that this behavior change was with the uefi bios introduction.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Gerrit!

23 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Maurice Kinal:

On the bright side, UEFI does reliably come with a shell (if
everything else fails) that allows starting other systems manually.

I still don't see the need. Doesn't have any todays operating system have a boot manager? The result is that the menu to select the starting OS is moved from the disk to the BIOS.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Kai!

24 May 22 05:39, Kai Richter wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

On the bright side, UEFI does reliably come with a shell (if
everything else fails) that allows starting other systems manually.

I still don't see the need. Doesn't have any todays operating system
have a boot manager? The result is that the menu to select the
starting OS is moved from the disk to the BIOS.

I talked about cases where something is broken and your system doesn't boot (maybe not even the bootmanager comes up). With MBR this means reconfiguring BIOS boot order, probably getting some USB media to boot a rescue system from it etc.
With the built-in UEFI shell, you can already check your partitions and even select what to boot without having to reconfigure anything or to provide a rescue system on USB. In many cases I was able to manually boot the failed system with this and use the system itself then to fix booting.

Some manufacturers provide firmware and bios update tools on efi meanwhile. In that case, you can just drop the new firmware and the upgrade tool on a USB stick and use UEFI-shell to run it from there. In the MBR-days you would have needed to have a MSDOS-system on the USB stick in addition (and hope that the manufacturer would still provide a DOS-based update tool that is able to run on your newly bought server or workstation).


Regards,
Gerrit

... 8:00AM up 62 days, 13:06, 8 users, load averages: 0.21, 0.39, 0.43

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: Is serving every man (2:240/12)

Hello Gerrit!

27 May 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

Some manufacturers provide firmware and bios update tools on efi
meanwhile. In that case, you can just drop the new firmware and
the upgrade tool on a USB stick and use UEFI-shell to run it
from there.

So i have to wait until my BIOS company updates it's tools and i
can save them within the BIOS.

Sorry, you lost me there.

Ups, i deleted that part. My point was that we have wait for the manufacturers to provide firmware. This does happen out of our control anyway. No matter if uefi or csm - in both cases we have to rely to the manufacturer. My bios does have a flashtool inclueded but i have to format an usb storage device to fat32 and copy the bios to it. I don't see much difference if i dd an image or copy the file. I see the efi partition as somthing like a permanent usb stick.

In the MBR-days you would have needed to have a MSDOS-system on
the USB stick in addition

Why DOS? We need to kickstart the boot sequence.

I was talking about updating BIOS or firmware in your system here, not getting a broken system online again.

Same task, we need to kickstart the boot sequence. The differnce between uefi and csm is the storage location of the whatever starting software.

Updating usually involves some kind of Windows software.

My last one extracted a windows disk imager and copied the image to floppy. Those are self-extraction compressed exes sometimes that can be unzipped or unarj'd to get the real image.

I'v seen an EFI editor which my bios doesn't have. Now i've to
check if anyone provides this efi software.

Which software are you looking for?

None. It looked like ee. uefi adds a layer of complexity. If i want to use uefi like a rescue system i can't simply use my known tools from my disk. I think i will stick on my rescue stick in case of trouble because the tools i'm used to are available.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Gerrit!

01 Jun 22, Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Kai Richter:

The difference is that without UEFI you need DOS on the USB stick, not just your BIOS flash tool and image. Ever tried booting modern server-hardware under DOS and running BIOS-update tools from that?

No, i use PXE images for that. Doesn't have a modern server IPMI and does the flash via ipmi bios image upload?

Same task, we need to kickstart the boot sequence.

No, we need to come up with an environment that is able to run the
flash tool the manufacturer provides.

No matter what OS runs for those tools - we still need to kickstart them.

If this tool is for EFI shell, this is easy. Getting a DOS tool to
run under DOS booted from a USB stick... your mileage may vary.

This is the responsiblity of the hardware manufacturer. Btw, let's look on the uefi shell. It can read partitions and filesystems and load/start software from. Do you remember toms root boot on a floppy disk? Basically it does the same. The uefi shell is not a shell of the bios - it's an operating system. If the flash tool is efi software the efi shell OS could be placed on the USB stick too. And again, the only job of the BIOS (remember it's BASIC IO) is to kickstart the boot sequence for an OS.

I didn't mean to say that EFI might fully replace your rescue disk (whatever it looks like), it certainly doesn't. But in some at least
for me quite common cases where you just want to get the system booted

Which common cases on uefi systems do break the boot process?

it serves that purpose and relieves me from having to boot the rescue disk.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Benny!

03 Jun 22, Benny Pedersen wrote to Kai Richter:

No, i use PXE images for that. Doesn't have a modern server IPMI
and does the flash via ipmi bios image upload?

my bios have ipmi, but imho not supported image upload to use it ?

I'm sorry to say that i can't take a closer look now. I'm sure there was something like upload but i'm unsure if it was upload for the ipmi image or the bios image. I got a working PXE boot before i got an ipmi board so i continued with PXE and did't dive into the details of ipmi standards.

On the other hand i think ipmi would be incomplete without bios update function because it's designed for remote system administration. As far as i remember it can load the boot image and at least that way it can load the flash disk with OS and flash tools.

Regards

Kai

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Monobox (2:240/77)

Hello Kai!

04 Jun 22 06:53, Kai Richter wrote to Benny Pedersen:

I'm sorry to say that i can't take a closer look now. I'm sure there
was something like upload but i'm unsure if it was upload for the
ipmi image or the bios image.

Depends. Supermicro, e.g., offers both. But only IPMI firmware updates are for free, For being able to update the mainboard's BIOS via IPMI, you have to buy a license key (or hack it). Updating firmware or bios of plugin cards like storage controllers is a completely different kettle of fish, again.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 9:53PM up 74 days, 2:59, 8 users, load averages: 0.71, 0.58, 0.57

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
* Origin: We are a nation (2:240/12)