Booting QU on UEFI machine

Just a short note on my progress.

I can't say that I am happy. I am trying to use syslinux 6.03 and a USB stick to boot on a "win8.1" laptop with 64-bit UEFI firmware, Secure Boot turned off, and "legacy boot" disabled.

I had to enable various EFI options in the Linux kernel configuration. I was eventually getting syslinux to launch the kernel, but no kernel output appearing on the screen -- until I enabled CONFIG_EFI_STUB -- I don't understand why, but I then got logging to the screen.

Doing the full thing, GTP partition table, 512MB FAT32 EFI System Partition, f2fs second partition, 64-bit kernel, it works, get logging to screen, but kernel panic as no 64-bit init.

With a traditional MBR, 16MB FAT16 first partition, 64-bit kernel, I can also get it to boot -- as the UEFI spec states a removable drive with those specs should be bootable.
Get the kernel log, but hangs probing the USB interface. No kernel panic, just a hang, needing hard power-off.

A 32-bit kernel is supposed to work. Syslinux 6.02+ is supposed to handover to a 32-bit kernel from a 64-bit UEFI, but it doesn't work for me.

It seems the only way that works for me is to create a 64-bit Quirky build. Do I want to do that? Dunno.

I will have to think about this. A side-reason, not the main one, that I retired from Puppy development, was I did not like the way things were heading, the changes. UEFI was one of them. Even GPT, I developed a dislike for. Systemd another. Then there is the bloatware such as LLVM and libicu.
...don't mind me, I'm in a grumpy mood.

Here is some info on EFI_STUB:
http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/efistub.html

Tags: linux