On Thursday, 26 September 2019 10:16:54 BST Adam Carter wrote: > > > The Gentoo Handbook says to create a small unformatted partition at the > > > beginning of the (primary?) disk, then to create a FAT-32 partition for > > > /boot, then whatever other partitions are required. > > > > Another question answered: yes, it has to be the primary disk. I installed > > a small test system on another disk. It has its own FAT-32 /boot > > partition, in which I set up a similar directory structure to the main > > system's. Efibootmgr still insisted on adding the UEFI entry to the main > > set, in spite of my telling it to use the secondary disk. And the BIOS > > couldn't see the image on the secondary disk. > > I found my BIOS didn't recognise the UEFI setup until it was > specified/setup by efibootmgr, so that checks out. What was the efibootmgr > command you were using for the second disk?
efibootmgr -c -p 3 -d /dev/sda -L "TestSys" -l '\EFI\BOOT\bootX64.efi' > > The conclusion is that, at least on this motherboard, there is precisely > > one set of UEFI boot images, and it lives on the primary disk of the > > system. Well, I haven't yet worked out how much of it is on the disk and > > how much in BIOS storage. The point remains, however, that I can't spread > > boot images over several disks. > > That's pretty poor. It isn't what I expected either. > What does efibootmgr show? # efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 Timeout: 1 seconds BootOrder: 0000,0004,0005,0001,0002,0003,0006,0007,0008,0009,000A,000B Boot0000* Gentoo Linux Boot0001* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive Boot0002* UEFI:Removable Device Boot0003* UEFI:Network Device Boot0004* CD/DVD Drive Boot0005 Hard Drive Boot0006* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive Boot0007* UEFI:Removable Device Boot0008* UEFI:Network Device Boot0009* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive Boot000A* UEFI:Removable Device Boot000B* UEFI:Network Device I'll delete all those duplicates. I don't know what's creating them. It's happened a few times since this mess started, but I never saw it once before then. > I got the impression that I would be able to UEFI boot from multiple > different devices, eg a USB drive with UEFI as well as the hard disk. Oh yes, removable devices can be booted, but not secondary, internal hard drives. Apparently. On this system. Today. -- Regards, Peter.
