EFI ?

[John Baldwin]

On Monday 13 September 2004 09:15 am, Frank Bonnet wrote:
> Hello
>
> First of all : I am totally new in IA64 world ...
> We have a machine that sleep into an office
> which is a HP RX2600 server.
>
> I have tested it with two CDROMs 5.2.1 and 5.3 BETA4
> the machine bootup with success.
> Entering into the disk partition editor I notice that
> some partitions are labeled "EFI".
>
> Before erasing all previous data I would like to know
> a little bit more with EFI.
>
> Anyone could give some infos/links about this ?
>
> Thanks in advance.

You should be able to find info about it via google.  Basically, it is the 
firmware (kind of like BIOS on x86, except better; somewhat like SRM on Alpha 
and OpenFirmware on powerpc/sparc) that performs the initial bootstrap and 
loads the operating system.  You must have an EFI partition to boot, though 
the 5.3-BETA sysinstall might create one for you if you delete it.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org