On 05/13/2014 01:58 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On May 12, 2014, at 3:05 PM, Stephen Morris <samor...@netspace.net.au> wrote:

On 05/12/2014 09:36 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On May 9, 2014, at 6:05 PM, Stephen Morris <samor...@netspace.net.au> wrote:

The one limitation with GPT as I understand it is that in order to use GPT you 
must also have UEFI active in the Bios.
No. First, BIOS ≠ UEFI they are not the same thing and it's easy to remember 
because there's nothing basic about UEFI. Second, while it's true GPT is 
defined in the UEFI spec, it's entirely up to the BIOS firmware implementation 
whether it'll work. There's no blanket proscription using GPT on BIOS 
computers, I have an old Dell Latitude laptop that permits booting with GPT 
partitioned drives.

But there are enough firmwares out there that crater when encountering some 
aspect of GPT partitions, that on BIOS computers, the Fedora installer doesn't 
use GPT by default unless the drive is larger than ~2.2TB.

    From experience I have also found that you can't install the windows system 
partition on a GPT device and I thought I read somewhere that you also can't 
put Linux /boot on GPT either.
The first part is true, the second part is not true. Windows' installer will 
only install and boot from GPT drives on UEFI computers, and boot from MBR 
drives on BIOS computers.
I'm probably a bit off topic here but Win 8 would not install on my machine 
onto a GPT device with UEFI enabled in the bios. I had to finish up configuring 
the partition on the 2TB hard disk with a DOS partition and also turn off UEFI 
because I could not boot my system because UEFI did not support my Nvidia GTX 
650 graphics card.
It's not off topic but the vernacular is incorrect, no doubt due to 
manufacturers who have been using it incorrectly. Many of them continue to 
refer to firmware updates for UEFI based firmwares as BIOS updates.

If you have UEFI firmware you do not have a BIOS firmware. If you have BIOS 
firmware you don't have UEFI firmware. If you have UEFI firmware you can't 
enable or disable it, although some manufacturers have used this UI convention 
to indicate whether a UEFI Compatibility Support Module is to be used. The CSM 
presents an (emulated) BIOS interface to an OS, and it's there for legacy OS 
support for OS's like Windows XP which have no idea what UEFI is or how to talk 
to it.

The fact your firmware with UEFI "enabled" (CSM disabled) caused Windows 8 
install failure with a GPT is a bug either in the Windows 8 installer, or with the 
firmware. If you have already confirmed that you have the latest firmware applied to your 
hardware, I'd take my case to their support service because there's no good reason why 
you should have to install Windows 8 with a compatibility module enabled.
I'm leaning towards the bug being in the windows installer, as when I looked at the details for the error returned by the installer, the installer's explanation of the error was that it could not install on a GPT device, so given that it was the installer itself that was saying it couldn't do it I'd be leaning towards it as being the culprit. The firmware in my motherboard did not support disabling UEFI out of the box, I had to get an update to provide that functionality. The update provided the ability to only use UEFI, only use Legacy Bios, to use UEFI first then legacy, or use Legacy first then use UEFI (this option doesn't really make a lot of sense). The ability to turn UEFI off was critical for my system as I could not use my graphics card with UEFI as it was not supported by the built in signature database, and being a relatively new purchase I was not prepared to buy another one, also from what I have read, if using multiple Linux distros its potentially critical to turn UEFI off. From what I have read Fedora was going to purchase the signature files from Microsoft (as I understand it the owner of UEFI, I have seen it stated explicitly to this effect) to enable UEFI support, whereas Ubuntu is going to go down the path of self signing rather than purchase the necessary licenses from Microsoft. I use both of these distributions as well as Win 8 on the one machine.

regards,
Steve

Chris Murphy


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