Re: [PATCH 6/6] gnu: Add grub-efi.

[Marius Bakke]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello!
>
> Marius Bakke <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>>>> OK. I'll try to find out why tests don't work with the UEFI variant
>>>> first in order to at least write a meaningful comment. Maybe qemu needs
>>>> UEFI support or something like that.
>>>
>>> It might be that we no longer need QEMU 1.3.1 to run the tests (see the
>>> top of gnu/packages/grub.scm)?
>>
>> The problem is missing UEFI firmware for the qemu calls. But we indeed
>> no longer need address@hidden for the tests, at least on x86_64. I replaced
>> it with 'qemu-minimal'. Pushed!
>
> Great!
>
> I’m failing at installing GuixSD on a new laptop I have here.
> ‘efibootmgr’ exits with code 2 and this message:
>
>   EFI variables are not supported on this system.
>
> (which ‘grub-install’ happily ignores.)
>
> This is because /sys/firmware/efi is missing, which apparently is
> because I booted off the GuixSD USB image (“legacy”) and not in EFI
> mode.
>
> What would you suggest?  :-)

What I did was a normal BIOS install, backup the grub.cfg, switch laptop
to UEFI (only) and boot a Debian live CD. From there "apt-get install
grub-efi; grub-install /dev/sda" and afterwards copy grub.cfg in place.

You may want to add "insmod efi_gop" and "insmod efi_uga" to grub.cfg,
otherwise you won't get a framebuffer until the proper video driver is
loaded (which may require unlocking root partition etc).

Not the most user friendly installation instructions! I'm researching
methods to make the base install image hybrid BIOS/UEFI.

Once booted, you should apply the following two patches when
reconfiguring the system. I think they are safe for BIOS systems too,
but haven't done extensive testing.

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

0001-build-Make-grub-install-command-UEFI-aware.patch
Description: Text Data

0002-system-Load-efi-modules-in-grub.cfg.patch
Description: Text Data