Dual boot EFI w/Ubuntu on ThinkPad T480s

exbug · October 28, 2023, 4:08pm

Hello – I’m not exactly a new user, as I have been using BeOS since PR2 (starting on a PowerMac 6500) and Haiku since it was first available but it seems Help might be the best place for this.

Originally I had Haiku R3 running on this ThinkPad T480s just great. I was using the Haiku boot manager (which is my favorite). I upgraded it in-place to R4 (very cool).

But then I decided I wanted to Dual-Boot with Ubuntu

The newest Ubuntu will only EFI boot on this hardware (MBR boot not available) unless maybe I take some special steps.

I finally fought some very tough battles to get Haiku and Ubuntu to both show up in GRUB, and I can get to the Haiku boot splash screen, but none of the icons “light up”. I have gone into the early-boot menu (space bar) and verified that the proper Haiku boot disk is identified.

Any tips on how to get the boot to be more successful? Would using some debug mode with the Haiku bootloader help?

My ideal setup would not use EFI at all, and I would be using the Haiku boot manager to select Haiku or Ubuntu. But if Ubuntu is installed for EFI booting then I suspect I could not use traditional MBR booting for Haiku and use Haiku boot manager to boot between both OSes.

It would also/alternatively be cool to get Haiku to show up in the firmware’s own EFI boot selection screen like Ubuntu does, but I suspect that requires tools that might be Windows-only…?

Yann64 · October 28, 2023, 4:31pm

I have Haiku showing up on my EFI boot selection screen, so this is doable (at least on my old Dell Latitude).
I had to manually create that Haiku entry and enter the path to bootx64.efi/haiku_loader.efi in the EFI settings.

exbug · October 28, 2023, 4:34pm

So your Dell gives/gave you the tools to set that up & edit it, without needing any third-party utilities?

Yann64 · October 28, 2023, 4:38pm

Yes, pressing F2 at boot allows me to access BIOS/EFI settings, including the possibility to enter new EFI entries.
And F12 allows me to display the EFI boot menu (so I can select to boot Ubuntu or Haiku).

PeterW · October 28, 2023, 4:38pm

Since you use EFI, you can use Refind (rEFInd) instead of grub or the Haiku bootmanager. I personally recommend that.

Some docu on booting Haiku on EFI:

Yann64 · October 28, 2023, 4:54pm

I just needed to

click “Add new entry”
enter the Boot Option Name : Haiku
add the File Name (\EFI\BOOT\haiku_loader.efi).

(the File System List was pre-entered)

I tried installing ReFind, but in the end my BIOS/EFI setting panel was easier to use.
I would still use Refind though as recommended bu @PeterW as this is probably the next best/easiest solution if your EFI settings do not allow easy configuration.

Also, it works only if SecureBoot is disabled. Could it be the reason for the icons not lighting up?

extrowerk · October 29, 2023, 1:38am

Stop using GRUB. Boot using the Haiku efi loader, if necessary, via refind.

I have T480s, it boots Haiku just fine.

extrowerk · October 29, 2023, 1:41am

If you want to create a boot entry: UEFI: creating Haiku specific boot entry

brunobastardi · October 29, 2023, 2:22pm

With newest hrev Haiku’s refind bootloader do not lit the icons up and so does not work atm.
Maybe related to this ticket: #18647 (Kernel doesn't boot (regression)) – Haiku

I have problems to get it starting with Haiku nightly 64bit newest