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Re: experiences with debian amd64 EFI test CD, build 3



On Sun, Sep 02, 2012 at 01:14:08PM +0200, Carolin Latze wrote:
>Hi all,

Hi Carolin,

>I just tested the debian amd64 EFI test CD, build3
>(http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/upload3/)
>and since the author asked for feedback I summarize my experiences
>here.

Lovely, thanks. :-)

>I have a Gigabyte B75M-D3H mainboard and want to have Windows 7 and
>Debian as dualboot. I installed Windows 7 first as UEFI (the
>mainboard supports BIOS and UEFI and I configured it to run in "EFI
>compatible mode". It also has a legacy ROM mode). The installer
>created three partitions:
>
>Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name
>Flags
> 1      1049kB  106MB  105MB   fat32           EFI system partition
>boot
> 2      106MB   240MB  134MB                   Microsoft reserved
>partition  msftres
> 3      240MB   220GB  220GB   ntfs            Basic data partition
>
>After Windows was running I installed Debian using the amd64 EFI test
>CD, build 3. My expectation was that Debian would just use the first
>partition as EFI boot partition (the one which has been created by
>the Windows installer), which is why I only created a root and a swap
>partition. However when I did that, the installer complained that it
>did not find an EFI boot partition.

Hmmm. What does "gdisk -l" say about the partition table? I'd expect
the code to pick up on partition 1 there, unless there's a mismatch in
the partition type code.

>So I went back and created
>another EFI boot partition:
>
>Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name
>Flags
> 1      1049kB  106MB  105MB   fat32           EFI system partition
>boot
> 2      106MB   240MB  134MB                   Microsoft reserved
>partition  msftres
> 3      240MB   220GB  220GB   ntfs            Basic data partition
> 4      220GB   220GB  128MB   fat32
>boot
> 5      220GB   221GB  1000MB  linux-swap(v1)
> 6      221GB   247GB  26.0GB  ext4
>
>Afterwards, the installer worked fine and I ended up with an UEFI
>Debian. However it did not detect the Windows so I had to choose
>between Windows and Debian by pressing f12 on boot (to launch the
>board's boot menu). In order to fix that I wrote a small script for
>grub that has to be stored in /etc/grub.d:
>
>#!/bin/bash
>
>cat <<EOF
>menuentry "Windows 7" {
>set root='(hd0,gpt1)'
>chainloader /efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
>}
>EOF
>
>I stored the file as "11_windows" and execute "update-grub2".
>Afterwards I was able to configure the Debian EFI boot partition as
>default boot partition. It will now launch grub2 which allows me to
>choose between Debian and Windows.

OK, fair enough. Nice workaround. :-)

>Summarizing, I think the only thing that is really missing is the
>detection of another UEFI OS. Maybe that can be solved if the
>installer would be able to detect the other EFI boot partition?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm hoping to achieve.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss


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