Are Vector installation CDs UEFI-aware?

[varxx]

I used Vector many years ago and found it a good way to ease into Slackware. I'm glad it's still thriving.

Now that I have a UEFI motherboard, I'm looking into distros that have UEFI-aware installation media. Is Vector one of those?

It's much easier to install into a UEFI system if the installation disk is recognized as bootable by my machine.

Thanks

[uelsk8s]

It works on my UEFI systems.

[varxx]

O.K., thank you very much.

[varxx]

I'm afraid this isn't the case, at least not with the VL64 iso. This CD boots via legacy BIOS only.

I wonder if maybe you have your UEFI-capable machine set to boot either BIOS or UEFI. I'm running a UEFI-only system.

[uelsk8s]

My UEFI mother board is set to only and it boots the VL64 ISO.
My apple computers don't have a bios, only EFI, and they boot it as well.
maybe my systems have some kind of backwards compatibility built in?

[Masta]

On my Asus M5A97 EVO, it is EUFI. Have no problems .
If you are able to give us more information on the hardware we can look into it a little deeper.

[varxx]

Thanks for the replies, folks.

I just tried the DVD again, and I got the same results.

I made the DVD from this VLocity 7.x file:

VL64-7.0.1-STD-FINAL.iso with an md5 checksum of a83ee1b1dae6ebbf6c1afa0aebcf3e7b.

When I examine the contents of the iso, I do not see the files I normally expect to find on a true UEFI-bootable disk. These would typically be one or more files with an .efi suffix, generally found in a directory named "EFI" or the like. The VL64 iso that I extracted contained no files of this nature that i could find.

I'm booting UEFI only (my MB offers Legacy BIOS, UEFI, or Both). This option has worked for numerous UEFI-capable boot disks that I've made from Linux installation ISOs.

Am I using the wrong file or something? I have a 64-bit machine. The machine, by the way, is a Thinkpad 420.

Here's the EFI firmware info:

Code:

EFI Specification Revision : 2.0
EFI Vendor : Lenovo
EFI Revision: 0.5136

Here's the part of my dmidecode output that pertains to the BIOS:

Code:

BIOS Information
        Vendor: LENOVO
        Version: 83ET71WW (1.41 )
        Release Date: 07/23/2012
        Address: 0xE0000
        Runtime Size: 128 kB
        ROM Size: 8192 kB
        Characteristics:
                PCI is supported
                PNP is supported

My motherboard will permit booting via BIOS (which it calls "Legacy") as well as EFI, but booting Legacy defeats the purpose, since my experience has been that an EFI installation requires booting the install disk or USB stick via EFI.

I'm encouraged that some of you have managed to boot VL's install disks using EFI; I'm wondering if I'm using a different iso or something. Please advise. Thanks.

[uelsk8s]

I am using the same ISO.
So to answer your original question, VL-7.0 CD's are not UEFI aware.

We will do what we can to get UEFI into 7.1

HTH,
Uelsk8s

[bigpaws]

MY TP does the same thing as far as booting
UEFI only. It does boot using legacy.

Vaxx can you explain what advantage you are
looking for in booting only UEFI?

Bigpaws

[varxx]

Thanks for your replies.

@uelsk8s: I'll look forward to VL 7.1.

@Bigpaws: Booting via UEFI only is the preferred way (and, in my experience, the only viable way) to carry out a UEFI installation.

[bigpaws]

Can you explain or reference any advantages of
using UEFI either booting or useage?

I am looking for a reason to explore UEFI an farther.

Bigpaws

[varxx]

This is a pretty good article on the advantages of UEFI:

http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/The-30-year-long-Reign-of-BIOS-is-Over-Why-UEFI-Will-Rock-Your/ba-p/198

As with most tech topics, UEFI is having its share of controversy (do a search on "UEFI secure boot"; also, the Pope -- I mean Linus -- apparently doesn't like it  ). For my money, I like it because it boots faster. Also, a standard BIOS can't boot a hard drive of capacity greater than 2.1Tb (my little Thinkpad isn't there yet, but maybe some day ...).

I made the switch when I got an SSD. SSDs benefit from GPT formatting (superior partition alignment). I read that GPT is part of the UEFI specification (see Rod's Book link below), so I decided to convert to UEFI and GPT at the same time.

One reason UEFI Linux machines can boot faster is that, since kernel 3.3, an EFI boot stub has been built into the kernel itself. In other words, you don't even need a boot loader. The EFI firmware in your machine will boot the Linux kernel directly, if you want it to.

To facilitate sending kernel options to the kernel, though, a lot of people use a simple boot manager like rEFInd or gummiboot. You can use grub2, but, as somebody who mainly just needs to boot a kernel, perhaps with a simple kernel option or two, I find grub2 unnecessarily complex. I've gone with rEFInd, which works very well.

I've learned a great deal from reading the "Rod's Books" pages on UEFI, GPT, etc. Here's one example:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/booting.html.

This particular page has a good discussion of EFI vs. BIOS.

While I've spent a good bit of time fiddling with UEFI and GPT matters and trying to get various distros to install via UEFI, I'm really out of my depth to try to discuss the finer technical points. Still, I hope this helps a bit.

[bigpaws]

Thanks for the reading.

Your response was ok at both advantage/disadvantage.

UEFI opens a big can of worms. The security implications
are immense.

For now I will stick with Bios vs UEFI.

Bigpaws

[Dark Rider]

It has to be said that if you buy a new computer that comes preinstalled with Windows 8 Retail it Will Be using UEFI. This is a requirement of Microsoft or else the OEM's are not allowed to build the machine with Windows 8.

I searched for UEFI issues because I wanted to install Vector on my new computer to dual boot with Windows 8. That's not gonna happen anytime likely because I already have a ton of stuff on this machine i would have problems moving. Otherwise, my solution would be to wipe the drive, disable Secure Boot in bios ( this rather than the UEFI itself is the cause of all the trouble i understand) , switch to legacy Bios mode and reinstall Windows 8 under that. This is a pain in da butt i wish i had known about before i bought this PC.. and do warn all your friends of this also.

What a lot of Linux distros are doing is using a EFI bootloader or a modified EFI bootloader such as this one for Linux mint: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=97221

Another solution is to wait until Linux (The Linux Foundation) gets an officially signed by Microsoft Secure Boot Key for dual booting with UEFI and Windows 8 as is in the works here: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source

And yet another solution is to manually go into Bios and switch between UEFI and legacy Bios modes every time you want to either load Linux or Windows 8 - which is the most pain of all.

[nightflier]

.. manually go into Bios and switch between UEFI and legacy Bios modes every time you want to either load Linux or Windows 8 - which is the most pain of all.

So your pre-installed W8 will not boot if you disable secure boot?