Porteus Installer -> USB : no EFI

[burdi01]

Porteus_Mate-v3.2.2-x86_64: Booted from CD, ran the Porteus Installer, selected the fat32 partition (/dev/sdh1) on my MBR USB stick and selected Install the Bootloader.
Only the /boot and /porteus directories are copied and the stick can only be booted in MBR mode.
I then copied the /EFI directory as well, and now the stick can be booted in UEFI mode as well.
So why is the /EFI directory not copied by the Porteus Installer?

[Ed_P]

I suspect the problem was your USB drive already had a MBR. I installed Cinnamon 3.2.2 64-bit to a new USB drive, super-floppy format, no MBR, and the EFI folder was copied to the drive.

[burdi01]

I suspect the problem was your USB drive already had a MBR.

Well, I would not know what the thinking was then as UEFI booting is independent of the USB stick having an MSDOS or a GPT disk label -- as my manual copy of the EFI directory showed.

Anyway, I repeated my test with an GPT USB stick: problem persists.
I then repeated my test with an ext4 partition on the GPT USB disk: problem persists.
I then burnt the Porteus_CINNAMON-v3.2.2-x86-64.iso to a CD and with that repeated my test to the fat32 partition on a GPT USB disk: problem persists.

In the Cinnamon test the Installer window closes, whereas with the Mate ISO things seem to be cut short -- see this https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0gP2v ... sp=sharing screenshot. But tracing the Cinnamon test also shows the cutting short.

So, is the super-floppy format the discerning factor here? For as far as I am aware there is nothing in the documentation hinting at that.

I added researching things to my todo list. Do not hold your breath though.

[burdi01]

Hmm, the Porteus Installer (/opt/porteus-scripts/pinstaller) script is not trace (sh -x) friendly. But as far as I can see (at copy_porteus_files() -- lines 629 a.f.) /EFI is never copied ...

The tests until now followed the "From Porteus itself (booted from CD):" path as mentioned in the USB_INSTALLATION.txt file in the root of the ISO.
If instead I choose the "From any Linux Distribution other than Porteus:" path /EFI is copied too and after running the /boot/Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com script the USB stick can be booted in MBR as well as UEFI mode.