Re: EFI

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

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Hello,

images are back again:

  https://nightly.ipfire.org/efi/2018-07-16%2022:35:21%20+0100-3deac294/x86_64/

-Michael

On Tue, 2018-06-19 at 11:26 +0100, Michael Tremer wrote:
> Hello guys,
> 
> images for testing are from now on available here:
> 
>   https://nightly.ipfire.org/efi/
> 
> Best,
> -Michael
> 
> On Mon, 2018-06-18 at 16:04 +0100, Michael Tremer wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > it is finally time to think about EFI. That's the new kind of BIOS.
> > 
> > In the past we have been ignoring this since the community did not want to
> > fund
> > any work in this area and there was enough hardware out there that booted up
> > fine without support for EFI.
> > 
> > Now this has changed, since Hannes told me that there is going to be more
> > and
> > more boards without a CSM and we are going to port IPFire to ARM64 soon
> > which
> > doesn't have a classic BIOS at all.
> > 
> > For ARM64, I might even want to push for EFI-only, but Arne disagrees :P
> > 
> > So what has happened so far?
> > 
> > I have created a new branch "efi":
> > 
> >   https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/efi
> > 
> > This branch collects all the changes to the bootloader, the scripts that
> > author
> > the images and the installer. Please review and send your comments.
> > 
> > The build creates two things in the end:
> > 
> > An ISO image that is bootable in EFI mode. It will install the system for
> > EFI
> > whether the system supports EFI or not. That will allow us to move a
> > harddisk
> > from one machine to another one. Opposed to the flash image, the installer
> > will
> > try to create a boot entry in the EFI BIOS.
> > 
> > The flash image will also boot in EFI mode or normal BIOS mode, depending on
> > the
> > system and leave the system configuration untouched.
> > 
> > Since EFI is a tricky standard and other distributions had loads of trouble
> > with
> > it in the past, we need loads of people to test these images on their
> > hardware.
> > I hope that we will be able to sort out any boot issues as soon as possible
> > with
> > this method.
> > 
> > Existing installations will not be migrated.
> > 
> > We will support EFI only for x86_64 and aarch64. There is only a few systems
> > out
> > there that are 32 bit and support EFI. Those are usually not a good choice
> > for
> > running IPFire.
> > 
> > Since I have no images ready right now, there is only code to review. I will
> > upload images as soon as possible so that you guys can help testing without
> > compiling them yourself.
> > 
> > Best,
> > -Michael