UEFI boot-capable Fedora CD/DVD

[rdh]

This may not be the right place...but I'd like to request that going forward, the
Fedora-14 (et al) boot CD/DVD(s) be made UEFI-capable (as are, for example,
RHEL6 and SLES11).

This will be of increasing importance as we move forward to Intel's Sandybridge
and future architectures.

-RDH

[AdamW]

it's not the right place, no.

Fedora should be EFI capable already (on anything besides Macs), the support is intended to be in and it's part of our release criteria. Are you having a problem with EFI support?

[rdh]

it's not the right place, no.

Fedora should be EFI capable already (on anything besides Macs), the support is intended to be in and it's part of our release criteria. Are you having a problem with EFI support?

Yes (problem), it's not there (that I can find).

Specifically, the DVD (64-bit .iso image) does not have the EFI boot catalog entry.
Admittedly, I did not try any of the other numerous .iso images; maybe I simply
chose the wrong .iso download??? (How do I tell?)

ban25uut010sc0 113 #>dumpet -i /net/urq/ISO/Fedora/Fedora-14-Beta-x86_64-DVD.iso
Validation Entry:
Header Indicator: 0x01 (Validation Entry)
PlatformId: 0x00 (80x86)
ID: ""
Checksum: 0x55aa
Key bytes: 0x55aa
Boot Catalog Default Entry:
Entry is bootable
Boot Media emulation type: no emulation
Media load segment: 0x07c0
System type: 0 (0x00)
Load Sectors: 4 (0x0004)
Load LBA: 458 (0x000001ca)
ban25uut010sc0 114 #>

Note no 0xef (EFI/GPT) platform type, only 0x00 (good ole BIOS/FDISK).

All of RHEL6, SLES11, Ubuntu 10.10 do (have both), for example:

ban25uut010sc0 115 #>dumpet -i /net/urq/ISO/RHEL6/RHEL6.0-20100715.2-Server-x86_64-DVD1.iso
Validation Entry:
Header Indicator: 0x01 (Validation Entry)
PlatformId: 0x00 (80x86)
ID: ""
Checksum: 0x55aa
Key bytes: 0x55aa
Boot Catalog Default Entry:
Entry is bootable
Boot Media emulation type: no emulation
Media load segment: 0x07c0
System type: 0 (0x00)
Load Sectors: 4 (0x0004)
Load LBA: 732 (0x000002dc)
Section Header Entry:
Header Indicator: 0x91 (Final Section Header Entry)
PlatformId: 0xef (EFI)
Section Entries: 1
ID: ""
Boot Catalog Section Entry:
Entry is bootable
Boot Media emulation type: no emulation
Media load address: 0 (0x0000)
System type: 0 (0x00)
Load Sectors: 696 (0x02b8)
Load LBA: 558 (0x0000022e)
ban25uut010sc0 116 #>

Other than the boot catalog entry(ies), the DVD looks ready for UEFI. This is born
out by failing to UEFI boot on two different platforms, one of which is a Dell R610.
(The other was a "lab hack" and not worth citing as a reference platform for re-
porting a problem.) Booting (and installing) in compatibly mode works.

-RDH

[AdamW]

we had some EFI issues with the beta but I don't entirely remember the details.

You might want to try Final TC1: http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/14.TC1.1/

[rdh]

we had some EFI issues with the beta but I don't entirely remember the details.

You might want to try Final TC1: http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/14.TC1.1/

Nope, no EFI boot catalog entry:

ban25uut010sc0 124 #>dumpet -i /net/urq/stuff/Fedora-14-x86_64-DVD.iso
Validation Entry:
Header Indicator: 0x01 (Validation Entry)
PlatformId: 0x00 (80x86)
ID: ""
Checksum: 0x55aa
Key bytes: 0x55aa
Boot Catalog Default Entry:
Entry is bootable
Boot Media emulation type: no emulation
Media load segment: 0x07c0
System type: 0 (0x00)
Load Sectors: 4 (0x0004)
Load LBA: 453 (0x000001c5)
ban25uut010sc0 125 #>

Thanks for the thought, though.

-RDH

[AdamW]

Anaconda team tells me the DVD images don't have the boot catalogs because they can break some BIOS systems, apparently. To do a an EFI install you have to boot with netinst.img . Sorry I didn't know about that!

[rdh]

Anaconda team tells me the DVD images don't have the boot catalogs because they can break some BIOS systems, apparently. To do a an EFI install you have to boot with netinst.img . Sorry I didn't know about that!

The 64-bit netinst.iso worked like a champ, thanks for the pointer!

I fully understand the breaking-the-old vs supporting-the-new quandry. Perhaps
you just need to maintain two sets of .iso's (groan!), one for old BIOS only, and
one for "modern" BIOS/UEFI dual-boot capabilities.

Thanks again for your help!

-RDH

[AdamW]

yeah, no, that's not going to happen. releng and qa team would quit en masse. =) but I appreciate it's a bit of a pain. Unfortunately, EFI-only systems are way in the minority at present, so we aren't really going to prioritize them.

[fpmurphy]

It is a relatively simple operation for the Fedora 14 team to make a DVD both UEFI and BIOS bootable. The code and process for doing so has been around for at least a couple of years and were developed by Peter Jones et al. RHEL6 uses this code and it works wells.

See Jone's Bootable CDs For Bios and UEFI (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pjones/BootableCDsForBIOSAndUEFI) for a starting point.

UEFI booting should be a priority item for Fedora 15.

[AdamW]

fpmurphy: read the above again. it's not that we don't know how to do it, it's that we choose not to, because doing so makes the resulting image non-bootable on some BIOS systems.