[Nottingham] How to create a UEFI bootable USB stick?

[Paul]

You might also be interested in Linux-Secure-Remix in lets you change
between EFI and legacy boot and has a great suite of programs added to a
live distribution. So many goodies I keep a copy in my laptop bag.

http://sourceforge.net/p/linux-secure/wiki/Home/


RG



On Mon, 2014-04-28 at 14:09 +0100, Duncan wrote:
> On 28/04/14 12:43, Jason Irwin wrote:
> > I'm using a BIOS laptop and I need to create a UEFI bootable USB stick. So
> > far every single tool I have tried only creates a BIOS-bootable stick.
> > Every guide I have found only deals with a UEFI HDD install (I haven't got
> > that far yet).
> > From what I can tell, GRUB won't create a UEFI bootable stick unless run
> > from UEFI hardware (chicken/egg).
> > Does anyone know of a way to create a USB stick that can boot on a UEFI
> > lappy?
> 
> Yes,  done it and still have the USB stick lying around to prove it :)
> 
> But now you ask, I'll need to remember how I did it...
> 
> I wanted to purge my Dell XPS-13 developer edition of ubuntu and replace
> it with Debian. I started creating a "system on a USB stick" so I could
> test the laptop before going ahead with the purge.
> 
> The debian (testing) installer can boot UEFI from a USB stick and install
> a UEFI system[1]. You need 2 USB sticks - one with a debian install image (D-USB)
> on it (I think I used the testing netboot image) and the other the target for the
> installation (T-USB)
> 
> With my laptop (Dell XPS-13 developer edition) I:
> 	1. Plugged in D-USB and T-USB
> 	2. Booted and select the laptop "boot options" key (F10).
> 	This gave me a list of
> 		legacy boot from ...
> 		UEFI boot from ....
> 
> 	3. Select the UEFI D-USB entry.
> 
> 	4. Told the debian installer to install to T-USB
> 
> 	5. Partitioned T-UDB for UEFI boot and install
> 
> 	6. After the install, because T-USB was UEFI and the laptop was in the default
> 	non-UEFI boot mode I had to boot T-USB using the same F10, choose the right one
> 	method as needed to bot D-USB in the first place.
> 
> 	7. Once satisfied that Debian could take command of the machine I installed it
> 	on the HDD in the same way.  Once working on the HDD via F10 boot I used the F10
> 	"change the default boot" option to set the default boot method to UEFI. Now the
> 	HDD boots hitting F10 during boot.
> 	
> Extra Notes:
> 1. I  didn't have windows to worry about and I use grub as the boot loader.
> 
> 2. You need a single EFI partition which on Linux+grub must be mounted as /boot/efi.
> The partition needs to be of type EF00 (gdisk option 't') and formatted as
> VFAT (mkfs.vfat -F 32 ...):
> 
> $ gdisk -l /dev/sda
> GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8
> 
> Partition table scan:
>   MBR: protective
>   BSD: not present
>   APM: not present
>   GPT: present
> 
> Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
> Disk /dev/sda: 500118192 sectors, 238.5 GiB
> Logical sector size: 512 bytes
> Disk identifier (GUID): 5BDA1EDB-4FC0-4AB1-A71F-852E6E2747BD
> Partition table holds up to 128 entries
> First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 500118158
> Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
> Total free space is 4717 sectors (2.3 MiB)
> 
> Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
>    1            2048          718847   350.0 MiB   8300  Linux filesystem
>    2          718848         1767423   512.0 MiB   EF00  EFI SYSTEM PARTITION
>    3         1767424         5672959   1.9 GiB     8300
>    5         5672960       500115455   235.8 GiB   8300
> 
> 3. Note the last usable sector is 500118158 but the last used sector 500115455.  This leaves
> enough space at the end of the disk for the backup GPT partition table.
> 
> 4. I have separate /boot (sda3) and /boot/efi (sda2) partitions so I can run a luks encrypted root.
> (sda5 == encrypted LVM containing root, swap etc which means I only have one passphrase for the whole
> LVM partition rather than one for each of root, swap etc).
> 
> 5. sda4 is absent because it was a late night and I had lost the ability to count beyond 3.
> 
> [1] Worked for me but I understand it doesn't work for everyone.
> 
> HTH
> 
> Duncan
> 
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