Installing the bootloader to an existing esp automatically is even easier than a new one, it should be easy to implement.
The only problem is the partitioning itself, especially stuff like resizing filesystems smaller of other OS.
We should probably tell users to use another OS for that and only prompt to use empty space or whole/deleted partitions for haiku
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ā¦deleting and resizing partitions is easy done in Windows for example!
Partition and formatting to bfs (Be file system) can then be done in DriveSetup in Haiku easily.
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Sure we can resize the partition itself, but the problem is the filesystem on the partition, to properly resize that you need to understand it properly, and for that you need drivers. We simply donāt have enough drivers for this task, especially not for wierd or foreign filesystems.
Hammer2 of dragonflybsd? ufs2 of FreeBSD? ffs for OpenBSD? The list goes on and on, there are many many filesystems nowadays that are all fine to use for their respective operating systems.
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Would it? If we replace āI installed Haiku and it does not boot because I did not read the manualā with āI installed Haiku and now I canāt boot Windows/Linux because I did not read the manualā, I donāt think that makes a positive impression.
So we have to be a bit careful about it.
Anyways, yes, we should do this and it has been on the list of ticket for the last few beta releases already. But it seems no one is very interested in actually writing all the needed code (which isnāt even particularly complicated at least for a āwipe everything on my disk and just install Haiku in a way that it is most likely to bootā solution, without worrying about multi-boot installations).
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Would a collaboration with gparted be an alternative? Ok, you would then have to offer both for download or at least put them on the medium in the official version.
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gparted does not know anything about this, either. It just runs existing tools on the command line to resize the filesystems. We would need to port these (resize2fs for ext2, etc); or implement resizing in our own filesystem drivers.
There is nothing very difficult about this, well, porting the tools will require some changes (for example, because they need toaccess partition table information which is not standardized in POSIX, so they use Linux specific code), but it is not a very complex task, in a few days it could be done.
Then there is the integration in Installer, which may need a little more work, but is not super complex either.
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That describes the problem pretty well. Maybe IĀ“m a bit naive but IĀ“m still baffled by the fact that people are installing operating systems who have no idea about bootloaders and the boot process in general (and disk partitions and the list goes on). Probably we should encourage newbies to try out Haiku in virtual machines rather than on bare metal if they donĀ“t have a spare machine exclusively for Haiku.
Getting back on topic, if have to choose between the 2 evils you described IĀ“d vote for including EFI bootloader.
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In the installer / disk setup is it possible to know if we are booting via UEFI ? Or does it depend on asking the user ?
We can detect it (for example we do so to load either the VESA or Framebuffer driver), but I think we should install both bootloaders if we are doing full disk installs. This way if you move the disk elsewhere, it will still work.
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āThe problem with auto-installing the EFI loader would be with the many different/non-compliant/strange bios implementations aroundāā¦ I agree with you, it should prompt the user to choose. I setup all my machines to run in legacy mode. I do not use EFIā¦even in latest PCs.
The installer material actually contains the āhaiku espā FAT partition on both R1B4 ISO image.
Using my machineās boot device list I can boot the UEFI way
as it enlists both the BIOS and UEFI bootable devices list.
Separately I can see the UEFI-CSM (aka BIOS) devices boot order list,
after that the every bootable UEFI(s) which present.
So for initial boot the install material this way OK now.
This partition consists the necessary files well prepared - both in /BOOT and /KEYS.
I do not use Secure Boot, However originally it was a Windows machine (Dell WS grade laptop - M6700) but I had always some Linux pendrive, and earlier Secur Boot was a showstopper for them.
As for Haiku there are Keys prepared, I think it can be for Linux distros as well nowadays. Anyway, the thing is boot now possible.
During the install these well prepared files can be copied from /BOOT of āhaiku espā partition to the appropriate EFI partititon - using to mounts and copying files,
BUT if Secure Boot is ON ā¦ for KEYS the user must go into the UEFI Secure boot part and assign these keys differently as it should be done on that particular machine - as I understood from the Readme.md file presented in the KEYS directory. So this is for example not standardized. It cannot be simply copy to a place and thatās all.
Lately I wrote a longer explanation in a post that Live CD/DVD/USB generally wont harm the userās existing install if they try to install something ā¦ it would try to do this on the install media.
Except if they start the Installer as there is a part when the Installer asks to prepare an install place if still not present a target volume with a BFS fs. So with partitoning they could harm their existing install on that machine ā¦
This is problematic for well being ā besides if the user does not know their machine.
Difference between BIOS and UEFI for example. To ignore actual settings they have to start the machine with aquiring the boot device list - always - as other way if they installed and set UEFI , but the machine is still using CSM ā¦ the installed Haiku wonāt boot, Or the boot order eliminates to reach the installed Haiku, etc.
Not only the multiboot can cause problems, but yes often that too.
Seems like adding a missing connector type to the radeon_hd modesetting driver solves the blackscreen problem while on rx580, i am on haiku right now booting from uefi and installing from zero deleting my hackintosh.
I think getting WebPositive to stream video/audio should be hight on the listā¦
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Should be branched out into a separate topic but as a short heads-up as I was just reading about the Haiku package format today, it would be just a matter of working out a sensible categorization and standard package metadata attributes (this should really be in the package metadata, and HaikuDepot as a user level application would need to be adjusted, just like any other consumer of packages that needs this info), since the Haiku package format already supports this, but it was not used for that yet.
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I think that PCIe bus change might also be required for dual processor jbus based sparc machines (like the Ultra 45). I wonder how that wasnāt seemingly required for Numa x86 machines thoughā¦ since they have 2 PCIe rootsā¦ perhaps one of them comes up as the parent and the other one is a child under that or something?