Re: macbook EFI experiences

[Isaac Dupree <id@isaac.cedarswampstudios.org>]

Robert Millan wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:29:59PM -0400, Isaac Dupree wrote:
>> It's fixed now for my hardware, Intel's new video driver in Xorg 7.3 
>> doesn't need any BIOS hacks or anything, I believe.  Anyway, I'll find 
>> out if it works just as soon as I manage to actually get into 
>> linux-kernel under EFI, so *if* it doesn't break, then I can keep using 
>> that and avoid (1) the unnecessary and potentially buggy CSM, (2) the 
>> hassles of installing a pc-bios-style bootloader on the header of one of 
>> my partitions. (and (3) be able to report bugs (in whatever software is 
>> affected) that happen later on when doing it that way.)  It can't hurt 
>> to try...
> 
> You don't need to use the header of one of your partitions.  You can use
> the MBR or even have a dedicated partition for core.img.  Then you can install
> the rest of GRUB in a filesystem that's not case unsensitive! ;-P

I know, but I don't entirely understand how it works and I'd rather 
not... and it gives me limited options: theoretical maximum of 5 I 
think, 1 in MBR and 1 in each of first four partitions (each with their 
own hacks).  I much prefer being able to put as many .efi files as fit 
all on one partition, for refit to find.  As it is, when I upgrade GRUB, 
there always has to be the fear that I did something wrong that I can't 
easily fix because it's not just in the location of my files (it's 
hidden in mbr/partition headers), and because I can't boot into Linux 
anymore because I broke the bootloader :-)  It's been very lucky that I 
can so far always boot into OS X without going through GRUB, and edit my 
grub.cfg from there... That, and keeping 10.4 updated, are the two main 
reasons I ever boot into MacOS :-)

> Btw what's a CSM?

"Compatibility Support Modules", it's a name for the BIOS substitute 
that Apple added to EFI to support their "Boot Camp"/Windows.


Looking at the page http://refit.sourceforge.net/myths/ "Fact: You need 
BIOS compatibility for 2D/3D accelleration" (which hasn't been updated 
for a long time...) it looks like if I want the console (rather than X) 
to display anything, I'll still need video BIOS... good to know when 
testing to see if anything works