[PLUG] Moving into new territory

[Rich Shepard]

I'm ready to set up the new desktop server/workstation with the Asus FX990
motherboard and am about to enter into new territory. Avoiding pitfalls and
gotcha's is highly desired.

Research has shown me that I will use the GPT partition type and that UEFI
is installed on this motherboard (based on the appearance of the setup
screen). Having no familiarity with either, and no non-Windows guide to it
in the system board manual, I have some questions I'd like answered:

1. The system sees the SSD, hard drive, and optical drive. It offers the
first two for selecting boot options. Is there a way to add a USB device as
a boot option? My prefered sequence is USB drive, optical drive, hard drive.

2. I'll be installing Slackware-14-2/x86_64. I've read on various mail
lists about UEFI issues. Might I encounter any of these? If so, how do I
avoid them?

3. With the UEFI setup is there a standard way to set date/time and some
of the other options? I had to connect a mouse to select the optical drive
over the hard drive(s) for booting, but clicking on everything else visible
did nothing (e.g., selecting performance, quite, or energy saving
operations).

All advice and suggestions are welcome.

Rich

[Ben Koenig]

Here are a few things to keep in mind for Slackware 14.2 on UEFI

First.... EFI will replace your bootloader. So the standard LILO boot menu
you've gotten used to will go away

Second... Make sure your BIOS is set to EFI/UEFI boot.
You will probably see an option for legacy or compatibilty mode to revert
to non-EFI booting. If your plan is to use EFI then this will create
duplicate boot options and cause confusion, so disable it for simplicity.

Third..
The Slackware 14.2 installer is EFI capable. All you need to do is make
sure you booted in EFI mode and created a >100MB EFI system partition at
the beginning of your boot drive, before launching setup. The installer
will prompt when needed to perform EFI setup tasks. Since the boot menu has
been moved to the BIOS, you won't need to go through the LILO setup prompts.

UEFI has all the same BIOS options as in the past, but these new eZbIoS
screens are so complicated I tend to avoid them like the plague...... so
yes, you can set it to boot USB first.

Post by Rich Shepard
I'm ready to set up the new desktop server/workstation with the Asus FX990
motherboard and am about to enter into new territory. Avoiding pitfalls and
gotcha's is highly desired.
Research has shown me that I will use the GPT partition type and that UEFI
is installed on this motherboard (based on the appearance of the setup
screen). Having no familiarity with either, and no non-Windows guide to it
1. The system sees the SSD, hard drive, and optical drive. It offers the
first two for selecting boot options. Is there a way to add a USB device as
a boot option? My prefered sequence is USB drive, optical drive, hard drive.
2. I'll be installing Slackware-14-2/x86_64. I've read on various mail
lists about UEFI issues. Might I encounter any of these? If so, how do I
avoid them?
3. With the UEFI setup is there a standard way to set date/time and some
of the other options? I had to connect a mouse to select the optical drive
over the hard drive(s) for booting, but clicking on everything else visible
did nothing (e.g., selecting performance, quite, or energy saving
operations).
All advice and suggestions are welcome.
Rich
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PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Ben Koenig
Here are a few things to keep in mind for Slackware 14.2 on UEFI
First.... EFI will replace your bootloader. So the standard LILO boot menu
you've gotten used to will go away

Ben,

I read that the elilo boot menu would work in an equivalent way.

Post by Ben Koenig
Second... Make sure your BIOS is set to EFI/UEFI boot. You will probably
see an option for legacy or compatibilty mode to revert to non-EFI
booting. If your plan is to use EFI then this will create duplicate boot
options and cause confusion, so disable it for simplicity.

I believe this is the default as the initial screen looks like the control
panel for the space shuttle. Pretty dials and fancy fluff. The BIOS is from
2011; the CPU is of the same vintage. I suppose the BIOS firmware can be
upgraded on this system ... somehow.

Post by Ben Koenig
Third.. The Slackware 14.2 installer is EFI capable. All you need to do is
make sure you booted in EFI mode and created a >100MB EFI system partition
at the beginning of your boot drive, before launching setup. The installer
will prompt when needed to perform EFI setup tasks. Since the boot menu
has been moved to the BIOS, you won't need to go through the LILO setup
prompts.

So, while the current /boot partion is 100M (and uses 88M of that) the
UEFI partition needs more?

Post by Ben Koenig
UEFI has all the same BIOS options as in the past, but these new eZbIoS
screens are so complicated I tend to avoid them like the plague...... so
yes, you can set it to boot USB first.

Good to know.

Will lunch or a couple of microbrews buy your experienced assistance in
getting this installation started?

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Rich Shepard

Post by Ben Koenig
UEFI has all the same BIOS options as in the past, but these new eZbIoS
screens are so complicated I tend to avoid them like the plague...... so
yes, you can set it to boot USB first.

Good to know.

Ben,

What I've learned so far:

1.) I found my way around the pretty screen to the Boot Option menu. The
only two choices are SSD and Optical drive. I found nothing to allow me to
add a USB at the top of the boot option list.

2.) When the distribution DVD loads I boot as root and select cfdisk. I
elect to use the GPT type. Only the SSD is presented by cfdisk; after I
learn what to do with this one I'll see if I can manually run 'cfdisk
/dev/sdb' to partition the hard drive.

3.) Using BIOS/MBR/and lilo I would create sda1 and mount / on it. Then
add a 100M sda2 mounted as /boot. I read somewhere this morning that the
boot partition should be the first one on the disk. If so, do I want the
type to be 'linux' or 'linux boot'?

4.) Is the GPT/UEFI mkinitrd command different from 'mkinitrd -c -k
<kernel number> -m <file system type for modules> -f <file system type> -r
<boot partition>? A couple of examples I found on web blogs suggest they
need a long string of module names.

5.) Apparently elilo goes in /boot/elilo/elilo (or something close to
that). Is the equivalent of /etc/lilo.conf in that same subdirectory? After
configuring the conf file do I run /sbin/lilo, /sbin/elilo, or do something
else?

Still much to learn,

Rich

[Russell Senior]

There is a new version of Slackware. It is called Ubuntu. Check it out!

;-)

Post by Rich Shepard
I'm ready to set up the new desktop server/workstation with the Asus FX990
motherboard and am about to enter into new territory. Avoiding pitfalls and
gotcha's is highly desired.
Research has shown me that I will use the GPT partition type and that UEFI
is installed on this motherboard (based on the appearance of the setup
screen). Having no familiarity with either, and no non-Windows guide to it
1. The system sees the SSD, hard drive, and optical drive. It offers the
first two for selecting boot options. Is there a way to add a USB device as
a boot option? My prefered sequence is USB drive, optical drive, hard drive.
2. I'll be installing Slackware-14-2/x86_64. I've read on various mail
lists about UEFI issues. Might I encounter any of these? If so, how do I
avoid them?
3. With the UEFI setup is there a standard way to set date/time and some
of the other options? I had to connect a mouse to select the optical drive
over the hard drive(s) for booting, but clicking on everything else visible
did nothing (e.g., selecting performance, quite, or energy saving
operations).
All advice and suggestions are welcome.
Rich
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug