[Nix-dev] uefi booting on nixos

[Shea Levy]

Hi Mathijs,

It's not totally complete. In particular, the installRemovableMediaImage 
option installs an EFI program that is a) really hacky and b) depends on 
protocols not available on every firmware (though when they're not 
available the boot fails with no bad effects). I'm working with the 
kernel devs to ameliorate the problem that necessitated the hack in the 
first place. I also need to do more extensive testing, especially on the 
macbook pro. That being said, I have been using it exclusively on my 
desktop for the past week or so with several successful rebuilds, so 
there's that. If you do want to try it out, I recommend trying the 
latest ISO from http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/trunk/iso_efi but if it 
doesn't boot in EFI mode boot it in BIOS mode for the install then, if 
your system supports efibootmgr, re-run switch-to-configuration after 
booting into the built system to install the boot manager entries.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Cheers,
Shea

On 3/16/12 4:34 PM, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
> Hi Shea,
>
> I saw your commits dealing with uefi booting.
> On my laptop, windows 7 boots fine from uefi.
> However, linux doesn't. Grub-uefi boots, but something goes wrong
> (memory mapping) when handig control to the kernel.
> In the past, I've spent countless hours debugging it to no avail.
>
> I would like to give it another try someday soon.
> Do you consider your uefi changes somewhat complete? Or do you still
> have more changes planned?
>
> Anyway, thanks for your work.
>
> Mathijs