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Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:55 pm

Hi guys. I develop for Makululinux and i have been building on both Ubuntu base and Debian Testing. However i have only ever built on I686 kernels. Users are constantly putting pressure on me to move to X64. I am now looking to move at least one OS over to building X64 on Debian testing ( cinnamon ).

The problem i have is i dont have any experience at all with UEFI, and the guides i have found online are very conflicting and confusing. I was wondering if someone could be kind enough to take a minute and just post a step by step guide on the procedure of what i actually need to do on the distro before building with refractasnapshot to make sure it is UEFI compatible. Which packages need to be installed, if any specific files need to be in any specific directories etc etc. I have never done this, so be patient please :)

I only use the snapshot to build ISO, i do not use the refracta installer, i use an ubiquity installer that was made by solidx and sparky linux. far asi can see the installer is ready for Uefi. i am just unsure of what i must do on the actual system before building.

I am sure this guide would be helpful to others in future also looking to do the same thing.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:15 am

You can try the latest beta of refractasnapshot and see if it makes an iso that's bootable on uefi hardware. Miraculix provided some code and is also working on the installer, but I don't have the hardware to test it. Makes it hard to do anything with it. The snapshots I made won't boot with efi enabled in virtualbox. At this point, I probably know less about it than you.

Here are the debs if you want to try.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refract ... b/download
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refract ... b/download
.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:17 am

Ok thanx, i will take a look :)

I have a current 64bit build i am designing, and it currently boots UEFI in virtualbox just fine. I have downloaded those debs. will try them and let you know. will be few days before i can actually build it, as i just started designing on the desktop at this point.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:25 am

BTW, if you want an ISO you can use for virtualbox UEFI ( to test your code ) here is one :

http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/jessie-upload3/debian-jessie-UEFI-testing-netinst-i386-amd64-build3.iso it is 590mb

it is from this website : http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/jessie-upload3/

it installs and boots UEFI fine in Virtualbox, you can use it to test your code. I am using it as a base to design my 64bit build.

It is the FIRST debian ISO to support both 32bit and 64bit UEFI, VERY VERY handy to have... there is no other support for 32bit UEFI in linux, it simply does not exist until now, so this ISO is like finding gold ...

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 10:55 am

ok, my OS boots UEFI fine while i am using it. however when i do a snapshot with those latest debs, the ISO does not boot UEFI. so somewhere something is missing... anyone have any idea what the checklist is to troubleshoot this ?

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 4:56 pm

Probably start by looking at the files and directories in the efi directory of the mounted iso and compare that to an iso that does boot. I was able to get the debian testing amd64 cd-1 to boot with uefi. I haven't had a chance to look at it closely yet.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:08 pm

and the current refracta installer does not yet support EFI right ?

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:53 pm

raymerjacque wrote:and the current refracta installer does not yet support EFI right ?


Correct. That one is still in the oven. I'll try to focus on this in the next few days and see what I can figure out.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:55 pm

did you see the debian ISO link i posted above ? that ISO works in virtualbox with EFI enabled... might make testing easier.

Re: Building UEFI ISO with refracta on Testing.

Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:05 am

Yes, I downloaded it and will look at it. Thanks.
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