Installer: New 'Install EFI loader"

Software Native
1

There’s a new item in Installer’s “Tools” menu, “Install EFI loader”.

I’ve been running Haiku on this notebook for over 10 years now in BIOS mode with MBR etc. and don’t fancy experimenting with that. But I’d like to describe this new menu in the Userguide. Can anyone give a short description how it’s used?

  • Is it applied after the regular installation of the system?
  • The submenu just says, “No valid EFI system data partition found” for me. What should it say normally? Can there be more than one item in that submenu?
  • Does it matter what disk is selected in the “Install from” and “Onto” pop-ups?

Maybe @pakyr has some insights, as contributor of this code in Installer? :slight_smile:

2

This PR I opened to update the online installation guide should about cover it

To directly answer your questions:

  • Yes, at the moment the user has to manually trigger the tool after installing the system
  • The menu will list all sufficiently large FAT32 partitions present on a GPT-initialized disk
  • It does not; the tool fetches the EFI loader from the Haiku boot drive, and the destination is chosen by the user when they select a partition from the menu

I do hope to automate this all further in future, but for now the user has to create the destination partition themselves in DriveSetup before they can use the tool.

5 Likes
3

Thanks very much, that should do! If anything comes up while writing, I’ll pipe up. :slight_smile:

4

Got this now in the Userguide:

If you use UEFI to boot your system instead of going the BIOS/MBR route, you can use “Install EFI loader” to copy the EFI loader from the boot/install medium to your prepared partition that you select from the submenu. That EFI system partition needs to be FAT32-formatted on a GPT-initialized disk with enough free space.

Should we recommend a minimum size for the EFI system partition? A quick websearch seems to suggest 260 MiB plus 100MiB per installed OS.

5

Well Next thing on the installer is trying to autodetect if a uefi system is using CSM, and not install any bootsector.

Why? Because UEFI systems with CSM enable can boot in legacy Mode which at some point this means no framebuffer driver and only vesa driver on a uefi system but those are at the same time because installer always makes a bootsector to hard drive.

6

The existing instructions on the website suggested a ‘64 MiB partition’; the EFI loader itself is well under a megabyte, so I think that should be sufficient (for Haiku alone at least).

7

Ahoy @humdinger ,

That patch’s solution executes that filecopy / rename what is described on Haiku site about EFI bootloader manual installation.
This way it does not create the necessary fat32 formatted ESP partition and format it – I assume – … this way you get the “No valid EFI system data partition found”.
It would work for you as well, if the solution would contain this ESP partition creation.

The live install contains such a partition, it should just recreate with a dd command on the target disk where optionally the new size may asked. However it would work only in case only the Haiku installed on the machine, or Haiku installation would be put on an another / different disk, but not a partiton.

Dual boot/multiboot systems to flawlessly work – would require a multiboot configured EFI partition content.
I mean,
you can have several different EFI partitons (one ESP on more or all disk if you want), but then you have to start the machine with a boot menu list creation. Then the EFI/BIOS will scan the disk for bootable partitions and offer all legacy and EFI boot possibilities.

Back to dd copy

Unfortunately this way the partition copy would not work in case someone wants a dual/multiple boot machine – as in case someone should create a more complex script that analyze the existing ESP partition content - if any - and create the necessary directories / files for it.
In the Live boot image .. it is a 32 or 64 MB fat32 formatted partition (bootable, efi partition type) that contains the followings (except some additional files I already copied or archived here, as it is MY EFI ESP partition on the Haiku USB thumbdrive):

root@mobimozi:~# ls -l /media/yannika/haiku_esp
összesen 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 dec 2 2024 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 dec 2 2024 KEYS
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 dec 2 2024 RECYCLED
root@mobimozi:~# ls -l /media/yannika/haiku_esp/*
/media/yannika/haiku_esp/EFI:
összesen 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 dec 2 2024 BOOT

/media/yannika/haiku_esp/KEYS:
összesen 10
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2059 dec 17 2022 DB.auth
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 791 dec 17 2022 DB.cer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1127 dec 17 2022 DB.crt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1275 dec 17 2022 README.md

/media/yannika/haiku_esp/RECYCLED:
összesen 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 dec 2 2024 BEOS

root@mobimozi:~# ls -l /media/yannika/haiku_esp//
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2059 dec 17 2022 /media/yannika/haiku_esp/KEYS/DB.auth
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 791 dec 17 2022 /media/yannika/haiku_esp/KEYS/DB.cer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1127 dec 17 2022 /media/yannika/haiku_esp/KEYS/DB.crt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1275 dec 17 2022 /media/yannika/haiku_esp/KEYS/README.md

/media/yannika/haiku_esp/EFI/BOOT:
összesen 1914
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 497504 dec 27 2024 BOOTX64.EFI
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 475424 dec 17 2022 BOOTX64.EFI__BETA4
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 497504 dec 27 2024 BOOTX64.EFI__BETA5
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 485384 dec 10 2024 haiku_loader.efi

/media/yannika/haiku_esp/RECYCLED/BEOS:
összesen 0
root@mobimozi:~#

As you can see, the directory tree contains an

EFI directory

and an

EFI/BOOT.

In case it is configured for Haiku EFI bootloader .. it is in the (/boot/)efi/boot and booting is going to work this way automatically – if in UEFI/BIOS

the Boot Mode was set to UEFI from Legacy

and

also switched to Secure Boot → OFF !

If you have for example another bootloader that would handle multiple UEFI boots .. e.g. rEFInd !..

then this config should be modified that way
→ to create a new HAIKU dir. under the EFI dir. and move its actual BOOT content with haiku loader files into the HAIKU dir.
–> meanwhile you copy the all corresponding rEFInd files under EFI/BOOT dir. and other dirs. under EFI as rEFInd document would describe. At least I could see this in case on Mint and Nobara linux

MINT 64

oot@mobimozi:~# ls -l /boot/efi/
összesen 4
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 okt 18 13:20 EFI
root@mobimozi:~# ls -l /boot/efi/*
összesen 8
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 okt 18 13:20 BOOT
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 okt 18 13:20 ubuntu
root@mobimozi:~# ls -l /boot/efi//
/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT:
összesen 1876
-rwx------ 1 root root 966664 okt 18 13:21 BOOTX64.EFI
-rwx------ 1 root root 88344 okt 18 13:21 fbx64.efi
-rwx------ 1 root root 856280 okt 18 13:21 mmx64.efi

/boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu:
összesen 4396
-rwx------ 1 root root 108 okt 18 13:21 BOOTX64.CSV
-rwx------ 1 root root 123 okt 18 13:21 grub.cfg
-rwx------ 1 root root 2660232 okt 18 13:21 grubx64.efi
-rwx------ 1 root root 856280 okt 18 13:21 mmx64.efi
-rwx------ 1 root root 966664 okt 18 13:21 shimx64.efi
root@mobimozi:~#

EDIT :

OK I wrote it so longer time meanwhile @pakyr answered to you as well.

So, I created MS-DOS partition map - not GPT - as for my needs I still had not needed more than 4 primary partitions yet, on the USB thumbdrive I use for Haiku installation, so my partitions won’t be scanned and found this way.

8

From personal experience you can triple-boot Windows 10, a Linux distro and Haiku with a ~100MiB EFI partition without any issues.

It sounds pretty silly to me increasing that partition size for each OS when the EFI bootloader for each system is a few megs at most, but then again I’m pretty clueless about this kind of stuff. (and never understood the move away from BIOS either tbh)

9
1 Like
10

No. The minimum possible size for fat32 is more than enough for us, so no need to bother the user with it :wink:

1 Like
11

I like this best! So partition size is an other-OS’ problem… :slight_smile: