freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 847, Issue 5

[Kevin Oberman]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 9:25 AM Walter Parker <walterp at gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> >
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2020 19:52:02 -0700
> > From: Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com>
> > To: questions at freebsd.org
> > Subject: UEFI dual boot
> > Message-ID:
> >         <
> CAN6yY1trVp2Sj2b1XDx1bzL9DDpY+Ap1rns9Dt4e9A6k+gzMCg at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > I just received a new laptop, the first to only support UEFI. I have
> shrunk
> > the Windows partition and used bsdinstall from the memstick to install
> > FreeBSD 12.1. The partitioning went fine, except that there are now to
> efi
> > partitions, the one previously on the drive for Windows 10 and the one
> the
> > install created.
> >
> > I now need to learn the magic of configuring boot. I have looked at the
> > wiki tutorial and the efibootmgr(8) man pae, but I am missing something
> > basic.
> >
> > Should I have two efi partitions? If so, how does the system figure out
> > which to use? Into which does the efi loader go?
> >
> > This is further complicated by not having been able to get the network
> up,
> > so I can't upload my configuration. (This is an unrelated issue as I
> can't
> > get W10 to connect to my network, either.)
> >
> > Anyway, pointers to useful documentation or a cluebat would be
> appreciated.
> > --
> > Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
> > E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com
> > PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683
> >
> >
>
> A clueball: you only need one EFI partition on a system.
> The FreeBSD UEFI data goes in a subdirectory on the UEFI partition
> (which is DOS FAT partition). IIRC the directory should be named
> something like FreeBSD.
> To boot FreeBSD, you would tell the UEFI firmware to add FreeBSD to
> the boot list by selecting the FreeBSD directory on the EFI partition.
>
> Another solution would be to use someline Refind to setup a multiboot
> loader rather than using Multiple firmware entries.
>
> A quick Google search shows a gist that talks about this at
>
> https://gist.github.com/zeising/5d2402d92b4cf421c7402d663b2d9e41#file-gistfile1-txt
>
> That link documents how to setup and configure at the UEFI level.
>
>
> Walter
>
Thanks, Walter!

That is exactly what I was looking for. Clearly written and the case is
exactly like mine... making a new Windows system dual boot FreeBSD.
--
Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com
PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683