[Mageia-discuss] UEFI

[Thomas C Gilliard]

On 04/23/2012 05:33 AM, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:00:02 +0200
> mageia-discuss-request at mageia.org wrote:
>
>> According to wikipedia, linux has been able to boot EFI since the
>> year 2000. Mageia (and Mandriva before) supports GPT (the partition
>> tables used on UEFI disks) on MBR disks, since I've been using that
>> for well over a year. More info at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI
>>
>> Grub supports GPT since version 1.97 patched for GPT (which
>> Mageia/Mandriva used), and on versions 2.x and up.
>> Lilo may not work with EFI, but there is Elilo.
>> http://elilo.sourceforge.net/
>> (The last release in 2007)
>> The 2,2TB limit is for MBR disks.  EFI and Linux support much higher
>> limits.
>>
>> Initially there were some problems with diskdrake, but I think that
>> they have been solved.  (The workaround for formatting partitions on
>> disks with GPT partition tables was using gparted.)
>>
>> Regards
>>
> One minor distro I tried recently uses GPT by default, but it seems to
> have its own limitations, e.g. won't run on a USB key.  From what I
> read, MS were going to have a bootloader that locked everything else
> out.
>
FYI:

Fedora 17 Beta uses GPT. and sucessfully boots Live USB's in recent 
tests I have done.

1-)Full install of a  live .iso to a 8 GB USB; use fedora disk utility 
to format: Custom install: GPT(boot) 2;  /boot 500; / balance of the USB 
no swap.

2-) dd write (to 2 GB USB) also works for the live .iso's
    dd if=Fedora-17-Beta-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=2M

3-)EFI USB's that boot on a MacBookPro i7
    ./tools_livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --format --efi --overlay-size-mb 300 
--home-size-mb 175 --delete-home --unencrypted-home 
Fedora-17-Beta-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso /dev/sdb1

[1]http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB#Run_livecd-iso-to-disk_script
Source of script:
[2]http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=hosted/livecd;a=blob;f=tools/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh;hb=HEAD

Tom Gilliard
satellit_
> I decided to look at Macintosh a few days ago, and found that it won't
> run on an AMD processor.  Then there was Windows Service Pack 3 which
> caused problems except for Intels.  My supplier said to ignore SP3
> anyway.  There seem to be a lot of schemes to lock you into hardware,
> and they aren't all Windows.
>
> Doug.
>