UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

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UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#1 by rchase » 25 Aug 2016, 06:59

I couldn't use the EFI boot configuration provided with Porteus with my Kangaroo, which lacks legacy booting. Installing Refind to the EFI system partition was necessary in order to boot Porteus but doing so and not changing anything in either copy of refind.conf resulted in chainloading the Porteus installations' own copy of Refind unnecessarily. No amount of tweaking of Refind's options would get it to find Porteus on its own; the firmware does not support legacy booting -- and Refind relies on it to find OSs. I copied the icons folder from Porteus' /EFI/refind folder to /EFI/refind in the EFI system partition, renaming it to p-icons, and modified Porteus' section in refind.conf:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Porteus GUI mode" {
	volume KERNELS
	icon EFI/BOOT/icons/os_porteus.png
	loader boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
	initrd boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
	options ""
	submenuentry "Save changes" {
		add_options "changes=/porteus"
    }
	submenuentry "Always fresh" {
		add_options "nomagic base_only norootcopy"
    }
   	submenuentry "Boot to copy2ram mode" {
		add_options "copy2ram"
    }
   	submenuentry "Text mode" {
		add_options "3"
    }
   	submenuentry "pxe-boot" {
		add_options "pxe"
    }
}
to:

Code: Select all

# non-EFI booting
menuentry Porteus {
	icon EFI/refind/p-icons/os_porteus.png
	volume Porteus
	loader /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
	initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
	options "from=/mnt/mmcblk0p4 changes=/dev/mmcblk0p4/porteus copy2ram rammod=00 timezone=America/Denver login=root"
}
and added it to refind.conf in the EFI system partition (obviating /EFI in Porteus; I renamed it to /#EFI). I also added the lines:

Code: Select all

timeout 10
and

Code: Select all

default_selection Porteus
Now Refind displays options to boot Windows 10 and Porteus with appropriate icons and boots Porteus rapidly by default..

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Re: UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#2 by wread » 25 Aug 2016, 13:36

@rchase
Please, explain in more detail your end configuration, where is your porteus folder installed, where is the original boot folder now, etc.

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Re: UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#3 by rchase » 27 Aug 2016, 23:52

The end configuration is just the changes noted to the default copy of Refind pointing it to Porteus. My eMMC is 32GB partitioned GPT with the EFI system partition at /dev/mmcblk0p1. Windows uses /dev/mmcblk0p2 and /dev/mmcblk0p3; I shrunk the main Windows partition and created a 3GB ext4-formatted one for Porteus at /dev/mmcblk0p4, naming the volume "Porteus". Porteus occupies /dev/mmcblk0p4 and all that is required to boot from Refind is copying it into the /EFI folder in /dev/mmcblk0p1 and adding the explicit invocation of Porteus found in refind.conf (located in /EFI/BOOT) included with Porteus or a streamlined and customized boot such as the one I use. Refind automatically finds Windows and displays it as a boot option; only an explicit invocation of Porteus works (on my Kangaroo) to display it as a boot option -- tweaking Refind's options other than the default OS and the timeout proved useless.

I am still embarrassed about inquiring about EFI booting here before I investigated Refind; it appears to be a bit of a mess and a largish project. Brokenman created a short Porteus section added to the Refind's default refind.conf, but it needs to be transferred to the EFI system partition in order to boot -- so far as I know, on any EFI-booting machine; a note to this effect included in the /EFI folder (and in Porteus' documentation) is in order!

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Re: UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#4 by brokenman » 28 Aug 2016, 02:04

If you have the right settings in the refind.conf I think you can hit the ESC key at the boot screen and it does a fresh scan of the partitions looking for kernels. I like refind because it is pretty but I am sure something else will come along.
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Re: UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#5 by rchase » 28 Aug 2016, 03:20

I didn't hit ESC while booting, but I did set uefi_deep_legacy_scan true -- I believe I used the default scanfor parameters for PC (and tried adding "hdbios" too). Refind wouldn't automatically detect Porteus, but having named the volume where I installed it "Porteus", using the boot stanza that you provided (modifying it appropriately) worked perfectly. Did I miss instructions to move the /EFI folder from Porteus into the system EFI partition, or will Refind work from the same partition to which Porteus is installed on other systems? My Kangaroo's firmware apparently looks for bootloaders only in the system EFI partition (/mmcblk0p1 of the eMMC).

Fullmoonremix mentioned coreboot in connection with EFI-booting; are it and its payloads suitable alternatives to Refind? I for one could dispense with the GUI in favor of text-based selection of the OS to boot; one equivalent to Windows' would be good.

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Re: UEFI booting Porteus (dual booting with Windows 10)

Post#6 by brokenman » 28 Aug 2016, 14:48

Correct that EFI only looks in the EFI folder for boot images. I haven't looked into core boot as yet.
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