Re: USB UEFI recovery stick

[Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside]

Hi,

On 2022-01-23 21:39, deloptes wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> is there a way to have a USB UEFI stick that works similar to the Debian
> installer - for example to boot into UEFI and recover the boot loader.
> One machine here seems a bit older and refuses to boot into UEFI from the
> USB - rendering USB obsolete as recovery option. In BIOS USB says AUTO
> (other option is Legacy) however if I disable Legacy keyboard does not
> work.
>
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/

rEFInd is a fork of the rEFIt boot manager. Like rEFIt, rEFInd can
auto-detect your installed EFI boot loaders and it presents a pretty GUI
menu of boot options. rEFInd goes beyond rEFIt in that rEFInd better
handles systems with many boot loaders, gives better control over the
boot loader search process, and provides the ability for users to define
their own boot loader entries.

https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html


--
Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
-Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development

[deloptes]

Hi all,
is there a way to have a USB UEFI stick that works similar to the Debian
installer - for example to boot into UEFI and recover the boot loader.
One machine here seems a bit older and refuses to boot into UEFI from the
USB - rendering USB obsolete as recovery option. In BIOS USB says AUTO
(other option is Legacy) however if I disable Legacy keyboard does not
work.

--
FCD6 3719 0FFB F1BF 38EA 4727 5348 5F1F DCFE BCB0

[David Christensen]

On 1/23/22 6:39 PM, deloptes wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> is there a way to have a USB UEFI stick that works similar to the Debian
> installer - for example to boot into UEFI and recover the boot loader.
> One machine here seems a bit older and refuses to boot into UEFI from the
> USB - rendering USB obsolete as recovery option. In BIOS USB says AUTO
> (other option is Legacy) however if I disable Legacy keyboard does not
> work.

I have a computer with an Intel DQ67SW desktop motherboard (released Q1,
2011). The Setup utility allows me to select BIOS/MBR mode or UEFI/GPT
mode. d-i seems to detect if the computer is running in BIOS/MBR mode
or in UEFI/GPT mode, and performs an install to match. So, I installed
Debian twice (via textual "Install") onto a pair of USB sticks, once in
each mode. (An "Expert" installation may offer more options.)


I mostly run my computers in BIOS/MBR mode, and use the BIOS/MBR USB
stick frequently.


I have limited experience with the UEFI/GPT USB stick. I need to test
it on a newer computer with Secure Boot, and may need to create a third
USB stick.


AIUI d-i and Debian Live are open-source projects. I believe they both
support all of the above in a single image. If you have the skills,
perhaps you could fork one and create your own image with the tools you
want.


David

[deloptes]

Thank you for the response

David Christensen wrote:

> I have a computer with an Intel DQ67SW desktop motherboard (released Q1,
> 2011).  The Setup utility allows me to select BIOS/MBR mode or UEFI/GPT
> mode.  d-i seems to detect if the computer is running in BIOS/MBR mode
> or in UEFI/GPT mode, and performs an install to match.  So, I installed
> Debian twice (via textual "Install") onto a pair of USB sticks, once in
> each mode.  (An "Expert" installation may offer more options.)

Ah 2011 seems right to match the one that refer to here.
I can boot from the CD/DVD into UEFI, but it seems I can not do the same
from the USB.
The USB which is UEFI can boot the newer notebook (has secure mode)

>
> I mostly run my computers in BIOS/MBR mode, and use the BIOS/MBR USB
> stick frequently.
>
>
> I have limited experience with the UEFI/GPT USB stick.  I need to test
> it on a newer computer with Secure Boot, and may need to create a third
> USB stick.
>
>
> AIUI d-i and Debian Live are open-source projects.  I believe they both
> support all of the above in a single image.  If you have the skills,
> perhaps you could fork one and create your own image with the tools you
> want.

The question is if it is not limited by the board. If I disable Legacy USB I
can not use the keyboard/mouse and I have to reset the bios.

But even in Legacy mode I see in boot options UEFI USB disk, however it does
not boot, but same stick boots on the more recent notebook.

Does someone knows more about it. What and where to check? I would not spend
time if it is the boards BIOS. I'll just keep a copy of the DVD/CD as
rescue

thanks

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Hi deloptes,

It depends very much on the machine. I've just saved a machine that has
32 bit UEFI implementation and a 64 bit Atom processor. It's an Intel Baytrail
with a small amount of memory [2G] but required the Debian multi-arch .iso
to boot.

A later model of the same series - Lenovo Ideapad - does support 64 bit UEFI
and UEFI processor. Which machine do you have and what's the processor?

All the very best

Andy Cater

Which machine, which processor.

[deloptes]

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> Hi deloptes,
>
> It depends very much on the machine. I've just saved a machine that has
> 32 bit UEFI implementation and a 64 bit Atom processor. It's an Intel
> Baytrail with a small amount of memory [2G] but required the Debian
> multi-arch .iso to boot.
>
> A later model of the same series - Lenovo Ideapad - does support 64 bit
> UEFI and UEFI processor. Which machine do you have and what's the
> processor?
>
> All the very best
>
> Andy Cater
>
> Which machine, which processor.

Thank you
I did not know that it could be different BIOS arch version - but of course
why not.
The PC is Fujitsu Esprimo C700
http://support.harlander.com/upload-artikelsupport/computer/fujitsu-siemens/esprimo-c700/c700-datenblatt.pdf

CPU is
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 42
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz

information is too little

thank you in advance

[David Christensen]

On 1/24/22 2:55 AM, deloptes wrote:
> Thank you for the response

YW. :-)

> Ah 2011 seems right to match the one that refer to here.
> I can boot from the CD/DVD into UEFI, but it seems I can not do the same
> from the USB.
> The USB which is UEFI can boot the newer notebook (has secure mode)

> The question is if it is not limited by the board. If I disable Legacy USB I
> can not use the keyboard/mouse and I have to reset the bios.
>
> But even in Legacy mode I see in boot options UEFI USB disk, however it does
> not boot, but same stick boots on the more recent notebook.
>
> Does someone knows more about it. What and where to check? I would not spend
> time if it is the boards BIOS. I'll just keep a copy of the DVD/CD as
> rescue
>
> thanks

I have found that testing is the only way to determine if a given FOSS
image/ device/ media boots, installs, or works in a given computer; and
to what degree.


David

[David Wright]

On Mon 24 Jan 2022 at 17:26:13 (-0800), David Christensen wrote:
> On 1/24/22 2:55 AM, deloptes wrote:
> > I can boot from the CD/DVD into UEFI, but it seems I can not do the same
> > from the USB.
> > The USB which is UEFI can boot the newer notebook (has secure mode)
>
> > The question is if it is not limited by the board. If I disable Legacy USB I
> > can not use the keyboard/mouse and I have to reset the bios.
> >
> > But even in Legacy mode I see in boot options UEFI USB disk, however it does
> > not boot, but same stick boots on the more recent notebook.
> >
> > Does someone knows more about it. What and where to check? I would not spend
> > time if it is the boards BIOS. I'll just keep a copy of the DVD/CD as
> > rescue
>

> I have found that testing is the only way to determine if a given FOSS
> image/ device/ media boots, installs, or works in a given computer;
> and to what degree.

Not just the image and device, but which port it's plugged into can
also make a difference whether it will boot. Very frustrating.

Cheers,
David.

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 24 ian 22, 03:39:47, deloptes wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> is there a way to have a USB UEFI stick that works similar to the Debian
> installer - for example to boot into UEFI and recover the boot loader.
> One machine here seems a bit older and refuses to boot into UEFI from the
> USB - rendering USB obsolete as recovery option. In BIOS USB says AUTO
> (other option is Legacy) however if I disable Legacy keyboard does not
> work.

The USB AUTO / Legacy options would suggest to me[1] they are about the
USB itself, i.e. support for older USB standards (1.1 and/or 2.0), which
might explain why your keyboard stops working.

As David mentioned, some USB ports might not support booting at all, you
should try all available USB ports.

[1] Hard to tell without looking at the menus, but the system's /
motherboard's user manual should explain what each option actually does.
Admittedly the explanation is often incomplete and/or badly worded.

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[Joel Roth]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 09:47:10PM -0500, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:

> rEFInd is a fork of the rEFIt boot manager. Like rEFIt, rEFInd can
> auto-detect your installed EFI boot loaders and it presents a pretty GUI
> menu of boot options. rEFInd goes beyond rEFIt in that rEFInd better
> handles systems with many boot loaders, gives better control over the
> boot loader search process, and provides the ability for users to define
> their own boot loader entries.
>
> https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html

I just migrated my system to new hardware with a GPT
formatted disk. (Well, almost migrated; I still have to
figure out the driver for the wifi chip.)

There was no reason not to reformat the disk as MBR (it is
only 500GB) but anyway decided to try to use the GPT/EFI
format.

I repartitioned, leaving only the EFI system partition.
For the bootloader I've been avoiding Grub due to its
complicated config files. (Maybe I'm just contrarian ;-)

lilo seemed to barf. I didn't get beyond the warnings that
there was some partition table error and that I was attempting
something dangerous.

My next try was Refind, a friendly OS-agnostic bootloader
that handles EFI. (I'd used it once previously when
installing devuan on a Intel Mac.)

The main limitation compared to Grub is that Refind doesn't
let you edit the command line prior to booting.

Despite lots of detail on the website, the actual
configuration is simple, even compared to lilo.conf. There
are just three lines in /boot/refind_linux.conf containing
options for normal, single-user mode and minimal boot. The
boot partition(s) are identified by UUID. Refind generates
menu choices for all kernels found.

Refind comes with several utility scripts. I used
refind-install to generate refind_linux.conf, but needed to
tweak the result for it to correctly find the initrd images
matching the kernel versions.

So in conclusion, Refind is easy to install and configure,
and suits my purposes just fine.

> --
> Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
> -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development

--
Joel Roth