FreeBSD with Win7 and UEFI

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Sun, December 28, 2014 1:40 pm, Warren Block wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Dec 2014, Christian Baer wrote:
>>
>> This is a little redundant, but I really want to make this clear...
>>
>> My motherboard is a Supermicro X10SAT. When the system starts, I can
>> press
>> F12 which lets me choose the boot device (basicly like in the BIOS
>> setup, but
>> an a temporary basis). This is a *motherboard* function, this is not a
>> boot
>> manager from any OS. The motherboard recognises both Windows (list item:
>> "Windows boot manager") and FreeBSD (list item: "EFI OS").
>>
>> I have seen no other boot manager after the installation nor did I see
>> any
>> chance to choose/configure/check one during the installation of FreeBSD.
>> The
>> handbook in rather silent about this subject too, which is quite a
>> surprise
>> to me. When I started out with Linux, everything was about being able to
>> coexist with Windows on a single machine. I switched to FreeBSD a little
>> later. My first FreeBSD CDs were of v3.3 (that was 1999 and I am feeling
>> very
>> old right about now). The FreeBSD boot manager of back then wasn't as
>> pretty
>> as the one supplied with SuSE at the time but it did the same thing.
>>
>> Is this an EFI thing or have the priorities shifted?
>
> UEFI is a whole new game, utterly different from what came before.  And
> FreeBSD's UEFI support is new.  As far as I know, it has no provision
> for multibooting in UEFI.  Code to do that would be welcome, it's been
> difficult just to get the current UEFI support.
>
> Your boot menu suggests that Windows 7 is installed for standard BIOS
> booting.  The easiest way to deal with this is to reinstall FreeBSD for
> standard BIOS booting also, with an MBR format.  Then you can install
> the boot0 multiboot program, but it really doesn't offer anything that
> the BIOS boot menu does not already have.
>
> Please also consider running FreeBSD as a VM with one of the many
> virtualization options.  That has many advantages over multiboot setups.

There is a big difference: in last case you have the machine running
Windows 7. Just out of curiosity: do _you_ have the same level of trust to
Windows 7/8 system as you do to FreeBSD? If yes, why at all would you go
into trouble running FreeBSD? Just curious (no offense to anyone/anything
intended ;-)

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++