CloverEFIBoot (was Re: Call for Testing: UEFI Changes)
Pedro Giffuni
pfg at FreeBSD.org
Wed Apr 11 16:54:02 UTC 2018
On 11/04/2018 11:04, Ryan Stone wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Pedro Giffuni <pfg at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> Hi;
>>
>> FWIW, I use a very old PC of the type where the processor will not be fixed
>> by Intel and that still needs support for the traditional BIOS. I also
>> bought a 3TB HD (they were easier to find that 2T).
>>
>> If I leave the disk dedicated to FreeBSD it recognizes the complete 3TB and
>> will happily use ZFS for everything, however I want to dual boot so after
>> lots of testing I ended up ignoring 1 TB of HD :(.
>>
>> It does happen that there is a really nice boot loader that could have saved
>> the day but it is very difficult to install standalone:
>>
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/cloverefiboot
>>
>> Just in case someone has the time and inclination to play with it :)
>>
>> Pedro.
> Is the issue due to using MBR partitioning? FreeBSD supports booting
> from a GPT partition from a traditional BIOS; you don't need EFI. Is
> this machine so old that its BIOS doesn't support booting from GPT?
It's a Dell Optiplex 760 (refurbished). I don't remember the details but
FreeBSD supports booting just fine if I dedicate all the HD to
FreeBSD/GPT, but the Windows bootloader wont so I needed a bootloader
with it's own EFI implementation that would. Clover comes from the
Apple/Darwin world and does this but I never managed to install it in a
HD; ideally you have to figure out how to install it before installing
the OS so I had to install it later in a thumbdrive.
FWIW, the only documentation I could find on the gory details for dual
booting (with linux) is here:
https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html
Cheers,
Pedro.
More information about the freebsd-current
mailing list