No-format install for UEFI based machines Win8 & MacTel

[gcmartin]

Might want to try burning @BarryK's or @ETP's Quirky/April 64bit derivatives to a USB and booting your Apple. I've never had an Intel Apple of my own, so I am NOT the best person to share experiences on that PC.

Hope this helps

[mjaksen]

I am utter flummoxed by this, mostly because I don't want to turn my laptop into a pretty paper weight. I have been trying to boot from a SD card to no avail. I imagine I'm messing up setting up the SD's partition properly, since my laptop's boot menu doesn't recognize the SD card at all, it just sees the DVD drive and the Windows Boot Mgr. I tried formatting it in Win8 and in gparted and fdisk in Fatdog. Below is what gdisk and fdisk said about my SD card (/dev/sdb).

gdisk:
Using 1
Partition GUID code: EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 (Microsoft basic data)
Partition unique GUID: BB8AAB17-E4DE-483D-9757-03FCA5494FF7
First sector: 2048 (at 1024.0 KiB)
Last sector: 3911679 (at 1.9 GiB)
Partition size: 3909632 sectors (1.9 GiB)
Attribute flags: 0000000000000000
Partition name: 'Microsoft basic data'


fdisk:
Disk /dev/sdb: 1.9 GiB, 2002780160 bytes, 3911680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000457d7

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 3911679 3909632 1.9G b W95 FAT32

Any ideas?

Also, can this uefi.zip method work on the hard disk partition, like grub4dos back in old puppy?

Thanks,
Marc

[Ted Dog]

Sdcards are famous for being too slow to be seen during boot. My trick for sdcards is to boot to bios/efi setup screen first to delay scan for sdcard. Also NO existing bios partition with older boot loader helps in a small handful of cases ( such as apple products ) .
Yes if you free a tiny partition at end of harddrive label it EFI. I found it works great with usb harddrives that are already formatted to NTFS. new partition should be fat32 and labeled EFI like the directions above. Best not to change internal hardrive for many, due to the careful safeguards needed to keep Win8 from self harm.

[mjaksen]

Thanks TedDog. You're the Pooch!

I've given up on the sdcard... I just had this unused cardreader slot on the laptop and thought I might get some use out of it. I already had an extra partiton I carved out of the main partition using the Windows partition tool some months back... I just formatted that to Fat32 and copied the uefi.zip stuff to it. I booted fatdog and slacko64 easy. (tahr seems to hate my keyboard and mouse). But it only works while the Fatdog CD is in the DVD drive. If I open the DVD drive, the boot menu only shows Windows Boot Mgr. If I close the DVD drive, I can see the CD and the WBM. I know I'm booting from sda5 (it's a fast boot and I can see Slacko on the EFI menu) but it only happens while the CD is inserted.

The boot order is defined as:
USB
Hard disk
DVD
Windows Boot Manager
Network

Truth be told, it does what I want (kind of) and I'm happy. But I'm confused by the need for the CD, since I'm not using it to boot.

Regards,
Marc

[Ted Dog]

Lol you may need to point the loop mount to iso files on harddrive. But because I repurposed fatdog EFI it still prefers to scan DVD drive earlier, I have no control over that. I like the handy bug, When DVD in drive it boot it, otherwise hunt for grub2 on harddrive.
Directions on repointing loop mount given first pages of this thread. Or treat it to boot frugal installs like one with grub4dos. Its fully grub2 not the watered down grub-like grub4dos.

[Ghost Dog]

Hi, this isn't working for me.

I have extracted the files to a fat-32 formatted, boot-flagged usb drive, and the only file I changed was grub.cfg to say fatdog64-701.iso instead of the fatdog one already there. I get:

error: can't find command `'.
Press any key to continue...
Falling back to 'Manually specify location of grub.cfg to use'

What do I have to do?

Thanks

[gcmartin]

Hello @Ghost Dog

What do I have to do?

You might copy and paste your config to this thread.
Someone here will probably spot the problem. If may be something as simple as a bad character. Did you save a copy of the old working config before you modified it? If so, post it as well.

[Ted Dog]

Typo. Watch for balanced ( ' " etc. Also do not split those beyond a single line also Balance the { [ etc.
ALSO watchout for wordprocessors verses text editors.

[Ghost Dog]

Thanks.

The only part of anything I changed was the name of the iso in the first boot option to:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Start Fatdog64-701.iso" {
loopback loop0  (hd0,msdos1)/Fatdog64-701.iso
linux (loop0)/vmlinuz
initrd (loop0)/initrd
}

I didn't think I changed the quotation marks (and they certainly didn't look any different), but because you say so I replaced the quotes with ones from the other menu entries. And it worked!

Now the grub menu shows at boot. But when I click on the Fatdog64-701 option it gives:

Code: Select all

error: no such partition.
error: disk 'loop0' not found.
error: you need to load the kernel first.
Press any key to continue...

[Ted Dog]

Do you have a high speed usb hardrive connected as well I have seen this if more than one is plugged in at boot. When I use a usb3 plugged in it changes the boot priorities. If you do hd0 may be hd1 etc.

[Ghost Dog]

Nope, no external drives of any kind, other than the usb stick (not v3) with the files on it.

Is it supposed to work with Fatdog 701? Should I try a different iso?

[Ted Dog]

Is it msdos or gpt partions try removing (hd0... ) and just leave / check name is correct.

[Ghost Dog]

Code: Select all

# ls
drivers  EFI  Fatdog64-701.iso  grub.cfg  keys  Shellx64.efi

Code: Select all

insmod png
background_image /fatdog.png
set timeout=10



menuentry "Start Fatdog64-701.iso" {
loopback loop0  (msdos1)/Fatdog64-701.iso
linux (loop0)/vmlinuz
initrd (loop0)/initrd
}

menuentry "Start Fatdog64-700b2.iso -BETA" {
loopback loop0  (hd0,msdos1)/Fatdog64-700b2.iso
linux (loop0)/vmlinuz
initrd (loop0)/initrd
}

menuentry "Start unicorn-6.2.1.91.iso -BETA VERY SLOW BOOT" {
loopback loop0  (hd0,msdos1)/unicorn-6.2.1.91.iso
linux (loop0)/vmlinuz

}

menuentry "---" { true; }
menuentry "Firmware configuration" {
	fwsetup
}
menuentry "Shutdown" {
	halt
}
menuentry "Reboot" {
	reboot
}

Looks like everything's spelled correctly. Maybe this just doesn't work on Windows machines?

I took out the hd0 as you suggested. Now the error is:

Code: Select all

error: disk 'msdos1' not found.
error: disk 'loop0' not found.
error: you need to load the kernel first.

[Ted Dog]

HD0 ( zero ) missing. Copy paste line from one below and then change to 701.

[Ghost Dog]

Ted I removed that because you suggested it two posts ago:

Is it msdos or gpt partions try removing (hd0... )

Previous to that, it was there:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Start Fatdog64-701.iso" {
loopback loop0  (hd0,msdos1)/Fatdog64-701.iso
linux (loop0)/vmlinuz
initrd (loop0)/initrd
}

So, with the ONLY CHANGE being that to the newer Fatdog, the error it gives at boot is:

Code: Select all

error: no such partition.
error: disk 'loop0' not found.
error: you need to load the kernel first.
Press any key to continue...

[Ghost Dog]

Ok, so I downloaded Fatdog64-631.iso and extracted all the files in uefi.zip to the usb stick without modifying any of them. Then I moved the fatdog iso to the stick, and rebooted.

The result, with no changes at all to the uefi package, is this:

[Ted Dog]

Ahhhhh no partition!!!!

This will require more solving can you open flashdrive in gparted and confirm its a msdos type bios layout. May not be. ALSO is it larger than 32G ? As a flashdrive or 1.5T as a usb harddrive ?

[Ghost Dog]

[gcmartin]

FAT16? May not be the problem, but ...
In any event, seems the location should be (hd1,0) instead.

Hope this is helpful on the UEFI PC

[Ted Dog]

Echo what Gcmartin says..