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

[xennex81]

I never intended to discuss personal stuff here. I merely wanted to join the charade by injecting a short question that would have a short answer as an opportunity to learn something from you 'professionals' that I have no opportunity to learn elsewhere and I hoped the distraction would not be so bad that it would offend.

I am highly focused on stuff that is meaningful to me but I live under horrid conditions. But let's keep it at that.

[Qqmike]

Just try to get focused. Start a blog somewhere, personal or Linux-technical. My objection to your postings here are that they disrupt the main purpose: trying to help geezer get info he needs or listening to the info he has. Try to be more relevant. Or post under Social. I know creative, intelligent people with a list similar to yours (including worse--e.g., borderline personality disorder, PTSD, etc.) and they are doing fine and DOING things and achieving things from art to writing, some have almost no money at all. Get a goal--any goal [that is meaningful to you]. But this is not the place to discuss this stuff, ok?

[xennex81]

I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to voice my response. I'm not a Linux guru, just a novice. I'm surprised you find offense in my posts this thread, especially 9 and 12. You ask what is up with you, which is a fair question. And a welcome one too. But I'm not allowed to respond because it would be personal info. I will try to respond anyway. First I have no access to a computer, all this is done on a phone. Second I'm locked up and reasonably malnourished. Third I have a head problem as I was hit to the head which was never treated. Fourth I seem to be somewhat psychotic for the past year and a half. But fifth and foremost they say I'm autistic and have no empathy. And sixth, I have been living in isolation for a very long time.

[Qqmike]

xennex81, I don't know how I missed all this, you must have been observing and posting opportunistically. I'm reviewing this thread for some info and find all your crap here.

What is this:

Post #9 (which I did see before, and ignored).
Post #12 -- a rant I somehow missed before.
Post #28: (which somehow I totally missed while working with geezer)
"Just for kicks: what are the three simple steps needed to turn my Debian server into UEFI?" etc., etc.
Completely inappropriate and irrelevant to the thread. Go to Gentoo's GRUB 2 wiki, but you already know that.

Being a Linux guru (you are, right?), you know better than to behave this way. WTH is up with you?

[SteveRiley]

Just a lot of bad software...just plain evil in terms of computer programming...In Linux they are abandoning all common sense in computer programming. {blah blah blah}

Then I invite you take your invective somewhere else, not here at KFN. Understood?

[SteveRiley]

Just checked the laptop box - Intel logo, but no MS logo or windows logo - nothing that mentions windows. ??

Huh, weird. Maybe the OEMs have gotten to cheap even for that?

[Qqmike]

Glad you got it. I didn't quite follow some details of your steps, but what counts is that you understand it and got it going!

That executed for much less than a minute and wrote a BCD in /boot/efi/EFI/boot/Microsoft directory. That gives me the configuration file.

Then using Dolphin I copied the Microsoft efi/EFI directory except for the BCD file there to a USB drive formatted as fat32. unmounted and mounted the USB on the desktop and as root copied those files to the /boot/efi/EFI/boot/Microsoft directory on the desktop.

[geezer]

Okay an update on installing Kubuntu on the desktop strictly UEFI.

Changed the setup to UEFI only and booted Kubunut Live from a USB stick.

Followed the procedure above to create the partitions in sda. checked with gdisk - everything okay.

Rebooted in Kubuntu Live and choose to install.

Completed the installation process. During the manual disk setup I let the "install on sda"alone. That was a mistake. The setup under Kubuntu was weird even though refind worked ine. Went through the installation a second time specifying sda1 as the place to pace the boot stuff. That then worked really well.

Rebooted at completion and it booted into Kubuntu no problem. Installed refind and few other programs - notably gkrellm- I watch that to make sure the downloads have completed.

In my wandering around the web I learned aout the "Windows Recovery" USB. I ha created the USB on my laptop, also windows 8.1, 64 bit. That eans the Windows USB Windows Recovery will wrk also on the desktop

Rebooted the desktop into the Windows Recovery USB and worked through a few options to get a command line and executed 'Bootrec /Rebuild Bcd

That executed for much less than a minute and wrote a BCD in /boot/efi/EFI/boot/Microsoft directory. That gives me the configuration file.

Then using Dolphin I copied the Microsoft efi/EFI directory except for the BCD file there to a USB drive formatted as fat32. unmounted and mounted the USB on the desktop and as root copied those files to the /boot/efi/EFI/boot/Microsoft directory on the desktop.

Rebooted and refind now shows the Windows 8.1 as a boot option. choose Windows 8.1 and it booted fine. Just to make sure I executed a few things and ran an update. Completed normally. Rebooted - windows runs fine.

So I do not need to re-install Windows saving me hours and many, many reboots for the install. The Windows Recovery with Bootrec /RebuildBcd command acts similary to update-grub and build a windows manager configuration file for the specific computer. It even managed to determine that ESP was on a different HDD from Windows 8.1.

So,now all I need to do is restore Kubuntu from backup and reinstall my favorite programs and I have my desktop working UEFI only.

All in all it wasn't all that difficult. cgdisk made the conversion from msdos partitions to gpt automatic.

[geezer]

Usually it's just a logo printed on the box the computer came in.

Just checked the laptop box - Intel logo, but no MS logo or winows logo - nothing that mentions windows. ??

[Qqmike]

The laptop has the Intel sticker on it. Don't know what that means if anything.

When I built my PC (2005) using an Intel motherboard (915GAVL), it came with one of those hot Intel stickers -- I got to put my own sticker on my own PC in my own way. Makes you feel, uhmm, well, kind of important ... It's fun putting stickers on like that ...

[SteveRiley]

This is interesting. I just looked over both the desktop and the laptop. Both are brand new with the desktop being the oldest, 6-4-2015 for the desktop and 6-24-2015 for the laptop. Neither computer has a Windows logo sticker on it anywhere. The laptop has the Intel sticker on it. Don't know what that means if anything.

Usually it's just a logo printed on the box the computer came in.

[Qqmike]

Also, I'm not too sure how well the windows installation would handle boot order with the windows being installed on sdd and ESP and Kubuntu on sda.

In theory, it shouldn't matter, correct? Just use efibootmgr to re-order the boot options in firmware to suit you. Usually, if GRUB is installed last, it takes over and places itself first in boot order. We'll see, huh?

He states that the boot loader can be copied from another source (computer, directory, etc.) with the 'cp' command, then use 'efibootmgr' command to register the boot loader.

That's my impression, too. Two notes on that, fwiw:

(1) Even though a boot option is not "officially" registered (using that complex-syntax efibootmgr command) with your PCs firmware, rEFInd will usually find it on its own and offer it up to you as a boot option in its boot menu. I've done this many times. For example, I've created such things as the directory /boot/efi/EFI/grub/grub_for_15.04_sdb2 using the general form of the GRUB 2-EFI grub-install command (explained in my how-to). rEFInd finds it and lists it as "grub_for_15.04_sdb2" in its boot menu.

(2) Let's say you do put together your own directory under /EFI/ubuntu or /EFI/my_own_manual_bootloader_installation. And you register it with your PCs firmware using efibootmgr command, as Rod Smith explains. What, then, about updates to your boot loader: will they go "there" to the custom directory you made? I tend to doubt it. What about changes to you system setup, you must then manually update your boot loader's boot configuration file. IOW, I am always concerned about having to maintain these custom boot loader setups, here, and in the past GRUB2 and GRUB Legacy custom setups. I'm getting too old to monitor such things ... and should have better things to do with remaining time on planet Earth ... But that's just a personal thing, not really relevant here.

[geezer]

Microsoft is not the only supplier of keys.

To obtain the "Certified for Windows 8" logo, Microsoft required hardware OEMs to deliver machines with Secure Boot enabled and with a Microsoft-signed platform key (PK). So configured, only boot loaders and drivers signed with the Microsoft platform key would function. This creates a quandary for alternate operating systems with their own boot loaders and drivers: these need to be signed by the same PK to function.

There are alternatives, of course--

• Disable Secure Boot entirely. It's my choice.
• Operating system vendors could supply their own PKs that have no relationship to Microsoft's PK. But how would vendors get their PKs to customers? Remember, the PK is placed into the firmware during hardware manufacture. Hardware OEMs operate on razor thin margins; they'll never agree to the extra expense of managing multiple PKs for the 1% of all PC people who don't use Windows.
• A key-exchange key (KEK), related to Microsoft's PK, can be installed into the firmware that would then allow using boot loaders and drivers signed by alternate certificates. Fedora's Shim program (used by many Linux distros, including all the *buntus) works this way.
• Machine owner keys (MOKs) can be generated by users and stored in the firmware. You would sign your kernels and drivers with your MOK to get the system to boot. The MOK is not related to Microsoft's PK at all.

Rod Smith has all the details.

The Windows 8 logo requirements also required OEMs to provide a mechanism to disable Secure Boot. This will change in Windows 10; OEMs can now choose what to do. It's speculation at this point whether OEMs will remove the ability to disable Secure Boot.

This is interesting. I just looked over both the desktop and the laptop. Both are brand new with the desktop being the oldest, 6-4-2015 for the desktop and 6-24-2015 for the laptop. Neither computer has a Windows logo sticker on it anywhere. The laptop has the Intel sticker on it. Don't know what that means if anything.

They are nothing more than status messages and I find them quite comfortable. Watching the scrolling boot text makes me feel that the computer is doing what it's supposed to be doing. I absolutely loathe "quiet" boots or graphical splashes, because they hide the boot process and keep me in the dark about what's going on. With time, you, too, can come to view the scrolling messages as a source of comfort

I used to watch them years back when that was the standard booting process- no splash screen. I got to the point I was comfortable with them, but never took the time to learn anything about them. Rarely I would see a message that wasn't normal, but the screen flowed by so fast that I couldn't understand what the meaning was. And then if a failure message popped up and was normal (some h/w that was looked for but wasn't there) I was getting to the point that failure messages didn't bother me, they're "normal", except not always, but the screen goes by so fast that since I no longer was really paying attention and so couldn't decide was that a "normal" failure message or something new??

So I like the splash screen much better now. If something drastic fails, I'll find out about it anyway and can hopefully find a remedy. If I cannot, then the failure message probably wouldn't have done me much good anyway.

[xennex81]

Okay then, just for kicks. Third attempt as my mobile browser keeps deleting my text. Don't you love that software? Google Chrome for android. Keeps resetting the page I was writing on as I "alt-tab" out. Marvellous software, so dependable. Makes me feel my time is worth so much (actually it does).

(So I'm imprisoned in another psych institution as I await my surgery).

Just for kicks: what are the three simple steps needed to turn my Debian server into UEFI?

Details:

* 2 hdd in RAID
* each drive has 2MB "Bios Boot Partition" in GPT
* next to that is 500 mb boot partition for grub files in raid 1 (mirror).
* system can boot from either hard disk
* just reads sda1/sdb1 and then proceeds to boot also if there is only a single hdd connected.
* root fs is also in mirror rest is stripe or mirror.

What would be needed to turn this into UEFI? I bet it requires a special partition. Grub is currently installed in sda1/sdb1 but its files are in sda2/sdb2. Say I don't even want a boot loader.. is that possible? (Bios does the loading)?.

[geezer]

Okay, just read through Rod Smith's "Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux: EFI Boot Loader Installation" and in my interpretation the boot loaders do not seem to be dependent on the installation specifics. He states that the boot loader can be copied from another source (computer, directory, etc.) with the 'cp' command, then use 'efibootmgr' command to register the boot loader. The boot loaders are like GRUB.

However, like GRUB the boot loaders need a configuration file and that might be the sticking point since I'm not too sure that the windows boot loaders have anything like "update-grub". I have found directions using the windows installation disk to 'rebuild' the BCD which is probably/hopefully the same as 'update-grub'. However, to get to that point the installation disk is supposed to offer a "repair your computer" and I don't think mine does.

I'll find out after I go through the above process and install Kubuntu. Then I either install windows 8.1 or try the 'rebuilkd bcd' option if it is available then. It might then since windows 8.1 is already installed on a gpt disk and an ESP will reside on another disk. So maybe those conditions might prompt a 'repair' option. That would save a looooooooooooooooooooooong time and several reboots for the windows 8.1 install. Also, I'm not too sure how well the windows installation would handle boot order with the windows being installed on sdd and ESP and Kubuntu on sda.