Creating UEFI boot on a computer with windows 8.1 and Kubuntu already installed

[geezer]

(2) rEFInd sure comes in handy! Some people (like SteveRiley) advocate using it exclusively, not using GRUB. If you have rEFInd, you don't need GRUB. (As I said, I have both installed, just because I like to mess around.)

I'm with Steve here. From my past experiences with GRUB problems (limited) and my very limited experience with UEFI on my laptop, I would rather use UEFI exclusively.

Also, since I know that GRUB will disappear in the future, if for no other reason than the fact that Windows Vista/7/8.1 and probably 10.0 is exclusively UEFI. That accounts for the vast majority of computers sold. So Linux will be forced to go UEFI exclusively in the future.

I would rather go there on my own than be forced to do so kicking and screaming. The former is far less painful both physically and mentally.

The only thing that bothers me about UEFI is the fact that MicroSoft seems to have cornered the Secure keys and others have to go to them to get keys (is that the correct terminology?) and then abide by their restrictive conditions. How did MicroSoft get the only supply of keys and why cannot some other company/organization get keys and pass them out like MicroSoft does?

As to rEFInd, I agree. I makes lfie so much simpler. I am going to have to find out how to have rEFInd boot Kubuntu quietly. Right now Kubuntu spits out a few screenfuls of messages that are probably helpful to someone who can read very, very fast and also understands the messages being displayed. I can do neither. So I get nervous when I get messages from the OS that I do not understand even though I can do nothing about them. Ignorance may be bliss, but having to much information doesn't really help. I'm sure it is nothing more than having rEFInd pass a command line option to the kernal when it is invoked.

I'm working my way through Rod Smith's very helpful information now and deciding how to shrink the single partition on sda and creat the EPS partition. Since I caqnnot do that while sda is mounted, I'll have to creat a USB or DVD with the partitioning tool on and boot that.

[geezer]

Just curious, what motherboard is on your desktop PC, or what is the retail vendor, make/model, of your desktop PC?

Motherboard: MSI, Z97 Gaming 5 (MS-7917) Vers. 1.0

BIOS Version E7917IMS V1.3

The Retail vendor: MicroCenter --- http://www.microcenter.com/

The model -- http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...sktop_Computer

[xennex81]

Will refind allow you to customize the boot menu you get? If it scans all possible boot options at every boot and lists them, that kinda defeats having customisation of looks. It's also something I find hard with Grub(2). Precisely because it scans and loads everything. You'd think you could have something as a persistent config file to list and delist options (or entries).

Something that could have the structure of "Show Windows at sda1;; Hide Linux at sda5;; Hidden menu password xxx { Show Linux at sda5 }.

Something like that could have beautiful display options and a password protected hidden menu. It'd be really simple and still allow for background scanning.
For example, you could have a password protected option to show all possible regenerated options.

[Qqmike]

If I can mention one more thing. If you have one ESP (placed anywhere, FAT32), we can assume that the bootloaders and boot managers will find it and use it under this standard directory (for Kubuntu): /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu. And if you use GRUB, and when you get updates (to GRUB), everything will go well and as it should go. But if you use the general GRUB command to set up another ESP, customized, using GRUB, maybe under some name like /boot/efi/EFI/my_special_grub_for_15.04, when you get updates to GRUB, will the updates go well, go to your GRUB properly? I don't know. You would think it should go well as GRUB should "know" where it has put itself (recorded in some config file or some such).

If you use rEFInd instead of or in addition to GRUB, well, then a lot of these worries don't matter, as we assume you'll get your updates to rEFInd, and rEFInd will always re-scan your system when it boots (and you can order it to do so with ESC, I think), and it will always be pretty much up-to-date and on the ball.

[Qqmike]

Detail, the ESP. I discuss using more than one ESP a little bit in Section 6 of this:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post373198
I've played around with this, and know two things

(1) A lot depends on how the OS and the bootloader cooperate. In many experiments I did, both GRUB and the Kubuntu installer seemed to ignore all the ESPs I set up but one, the sda1. Would this apply in general? I don't know.

As for where to place the ESP, in theory, no matter where you placed an ESP, your UEFI-aware programs (GRUB, Kubuntu, rEFInd) will look around and try to find what it thinks looks like an ESP and then try to use it. When you use the general GRUB2-EFI command (discussed in that link), you can then customize your GRUB-booting setup and ensure things go the way you intend, and it's easy to use any ESP or to use more than one ESP.

(2) rEFInd sure comes in handy! Some people (like SteveRiley) advocate using it exclusively, not using GRUB. If you have rEFInd, you don't need GRUB. (As I said, I have both installed, just because I like to mess around.)

[Qqmike]

Re-reading your post this morning, it looks like Rod Smith covers the points you need. Your setup makes sense, but it is not the simplest setup I've ever seen here! :-) I only quickly scanned some of his pages on this (MBR --> GPT, and BIOS boot --> UEFI booting), looks doable, but there are some details, and the going can get "thick" in places. When he refers to GPT fdisk, as you may know, he is referring to the gdisk he wrote; sometimes you have to install gdisk, as I think you already did on the laptop experience.

Just curious, what motherboard is on your desktop PC, or what is the retail vendor, make/model, of your desktop PC?

ESP:

4) Could it be on another HDD. Could I convert that sdd1 partition to the EFI partition. That would be the same size as the EFI partition on the laptop that was made by the pre-installed Windows 8.1 there.

That's the Windows System Reserve partition, right? Again, a Windows expert should comment. But, personally, from what I've seen, maybe it's chicken stupidstition, but I would not mess with any Windows installed special partitions.

Good luck on this. I don't know how much help I can be, but I'll follow it for sure, as will others, I'm sure. I would read and re-read Rod Smith two or three times until I'm very familiar with it. Much of what he says deals with exceptions and problems you can have. But maybe things would go smoothly and there may not be too many glitches. What counts in these matters is to be prepared. My Boy Scout leader was right about that back in the 1950's. I know you know

[Qqmike]

Converting to or from GPT


http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html
http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html

[Qqmike]

http://www.rodsbooks.com/linux-uefi/#oops
(not quite what you are asking, I don't think)

[Qqmike]

https://www.google.com/search?client...utf-8&oe=utf-8

[Qqmike]

I'm leaving for a short while at the moment, so I'll just drop some leads so you can get started.

In theory, the ESP can be anywhere; in fact, in theory, you might not even need one (but let's not go there). This is all the definitive I have been able to find on these subtleties:
http://blog.uncooperative.org/blog/2...tem-partition/

As for converting (EDIT: not BIOS but MBR) MBR to GPT ... I'm sure that's a subject I've intentially skipped as I hadn't planned on doing it, ever. I'm pretty sure that Rod Smith may address this (or is it BIOS mode to UEFI)? I can't recall, but he doess address something along these lines. Does gdisk make such conversions? I just can't recall. We'll have to dig on the rodsmith site.

[geezer]

I started a separate thread on this so if anybody is looking for this, they can find a separate thread on the subject.

Okay I have the laptop working with UEFI boot. Now I find that I like it and am seriously considering converting the desktop to UEFI boot.

The desktop is currently working fine and booting fine, but with the MBR instead of UEFI. I have four HDD:

1) sda, SSD, 11.79 GB - 1 partition, ext4. mounted as '/'
2) sdb, HDD, 1.82 TB - 1 extended partition containing 2 ext4 partitions, sdb6 mounted as '/home' & sdb5 mounted as '/home/backup-1', The last partition is swap
3) sdc, HDD, 1.82 TB - sdc1, 1.36 TB mounted as ext4 '/home-linux', an extended partition, sdc2, containing : sdc5 ext4 mounted as mounted '/home/backup-2' and sdc6 vfat mounted as /dos/FAT32
4) sdd HDD, 465.76 MB - my Windows 8.1 HDD with 2 partitions - sdd1 NTFS System Reserve, 350 MB & sdd2 ntfs mounted as /dos/windows

A couple of questions:

1) how feasible is it to convert from MBR to UEFI boot? Gparted lists the partition table of all 4 disks as msdos.

2) I assume that I would have to convert the partition tables from msdos to GUID to convert to UEFI. Can that be done in place.

3)Does the EFI partition have to be on sda? If so I assume that I would have to reallocate sda to create a fat partition at the beginning of sda for EFI partition.

4)Could it be on another HDD. Could I convert that sdd1 partition to the EFI partition. That would be the same size as the EFI partition on the laptop that was made by the pre-installed Windows 8.1 there.

5)I have a external 2 TB USB drives plugged into the Laptop and the Desktop for backup purposes (I like independent backup disks - I've had disk failures in the past and with the USB drives I've got quadruple independent backup disks. Losing all of your backup once, Burned once forever shy). I could install Kubuntu on the Desktop USB drive and boot from the USB drive (I have already done that when I first got them and it worked fine). So if I had to work from Kubuntu and redo the 4 HDD completely, that is feasible. It would reduce me to one backup disc for a short while, but hopefully not long.

I guess the first question is how to convert from msdos partition tables to GUID partition tables? The BIOS on the desktop is totally different from the laptop bios. Not too sure how it would work with UEFI.

I just rebooted and checked the desktop BIOS. It has 2 boot modes: 1) UEFI + Legacy, and 2) UEFI.

Right now it is using the first boot mode, UEFI + Legacy. I was looking quickly, but I didn't see anything about "Secure Boot".