Re: How to boot in UEFI mode: practically no documentation

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

Just to say that all this worked for me. I had some 100gb left free on a GPT disk with a few other systems installed and finally decided to try EFI boot, using the efi boot image from releng. I only had to create /dev entries for dk16, dk17 and dk18, 16 were not enough. I also had to disable nouveau, the geforce 950m apparently is still unsupported and I get 'no console device'. I haven't been able to get X running on this laptop, but the rest seems fine.

Chavdar 

On Tue, 29 May 2018, 09:34 Martin Husemann, <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 08:15:43AM +0000, Thomas Mueller wrote:
> Where do I find documentation on how to boot NetBSD amd64 or possibly i386 in UEFI mode?

I'm working on a wiki page (and will change the NetBSD 8.0 install docs
to point to that).

I can't answer how to boot into alternative operating systems (haven't tried
that yet). But the basic installation goes like this:

 - You want to boot from the uefi usb install image. This requires "secure
   boot" to be disabled. Some firmwares require you to set a firmware
   password before allowing to disable that

Assuming you have a scratch disk (called wd0) you want to fully use for NetBSD you
do something like:

 gpt destroy wd0
 gpt create wd0
 gpt add -a 2m -l "EFI system" -t efi -s 128m wd0
 gpt add -a 2m -l NetBSD -t ffs -s 118g wd0             # replace 118g as needed
 gpt add -a 2m -l swap -t swap wd0      # this will use all remaining space
 dkctl wd0 listwedges

Now note which dk* is the EFI one and newfs it (also note the ffs one
for later, see below):

 newfs_msdos /dev/rdk3  # replace dk3 with proper device

Then make it bootable:

 mount -t msdos /dev/dk3 /mnt
 mkdir -p /mnt/EFI/boot
 cp /usr/mdec/*.efi /mnt/EFI/boot
 umount /mnt

I have sysinst changes that will allow the remaining part to be handled
by sysinst in NetBSD 8.0 (hope to finsih that soon).

But for now you will have to install manually. Check the dkctl output
for which dk* is the ffs one and newfs/mount it:

 newfs -O 2 dk4         # replace dk4 by approrpiate device, see above
 mount -o async /dev/dk4 /mnt
 cd /mnt

Now extract (with tar xpzf) all sets you want, including the appropriate
kernel. Also:

 cp /usr/mdec/boot .    # copy secondary bootloader (XXX is this needed for uefi)?
 cd dev
 sh MAKEDEV all
 vi /etc/fstab

A fstab could look like:

NAME=NetBSD     /       ffs     rw      1 1
NAME=swap       none    swap    sw,dp   0 0
kernfs          /kern   kernfs  rw
ptyfs           /dev/pts ptyfs  rw
procfs          /proc   procfs  rw
tmpfs /var/shm        tmpfs   rw,-m1777,-sram%25

Finally set rc_configured=YES in /mnt/etc/rc.conf, plus add hostname=
and whatever settings you need.

Now reboot, remove install usb medium, and watch NetBSD boot from uefi.

Martin