Re: i386 EFI (and Mac builds)
On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 12:12:35PM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
>Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> (2015-01-31):
>> So, I've spent a lot of time hacking on things to get i386 and mixed
>> amd64/i386 systems working with EFI in d-i, debian-cd, grub etc.
>
>Great.
>
>> As an explanation: turning on i386 EFI is an easy thing, but it will
>> cause some older x86 Macs to stop being able to boot Debian
>> installation media. They have broken firmware which breaks when more
>> than one boot method is available on CD media (in this case, BIOS boot
>> and EFI boot). So, if we want to continue supporting these users we'll
>> need to provide a/some special Mac flavour(s) of i386 install
>> disc. I'm proposing that we make *only* a special Mac flavour of the
>> netinst, and I've already started working on that locally in
>> debian-cd.
>>
>> So... How does that sound? We'll need to add more docs for this, of
>> course, and it's likely to confuse *some* users which bothers me.
>
>It's definitely tricky to get that right indeed. There's so much
>confusion around netinst vs. netboot in people's mind… but yeah, we
>can't hold i386 EFI back because of some old, buggy hardware, even if
>it's as widespread/famous as Macs. Pointing people to the right doc /
>image is something that shouldn't take us too much time once doc has
>been written/updated. Supporting newer hardware seems more important
>to me than keeping a flawless experience for older hardware (with all
>images that is, as long as we keep support for it through netinst…).
OK, cool. :-)
I pushed the changes and I've added initial Mac netinst support, but
for now it's very much untested...
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
Who needs computer imagery when you've got Brian Blessed?
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