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Re: Installing and running UEFI DUET

Cross-posted to 4 groups.

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Hello John,

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
> One cannot boot IBM OS/2 directly from EFI firmware.  IBM OS/2 is only 
> bootable in the old PC/AT way.  Maybe the osFree people working on their 
> FREELDR will work on a version that can run on EFI systems.  (If you're 
> reading this: You won't have to worry about switching into protected 
> mode, using mini-FSDs, enabling A20 gates, or any of that chaff.  The 
> firmware will do all that for you.)
> 
> It's possible to make an old PC98 machine into a Poor Man's EFI machine, 
> using DUET ("Developers' UEFI Emulation Tool").  This is, basically, a 
> program image that is booted as if it were an old-style PC/AT operating 
> system, that loads up a reference implementation of EFI firmware and 
> displays the EFI Boot Manager.  One can then run EFI "pre-boot" 
> applications (from Microsoft's old DISKPART.EFI to the stuff that one 
> can now get for Intel Macintoshes) and bootstrap EFI operating system 
> boot loader programs on top of it, just as one would on a true EFI 
> system.  There is even the good old built-in UEFI Shell, complete with 
> text editor, file manipulation tools, and whatnot.  The downside is 
> that, as supplied, DUET's own bootstrap mechanism leaves a huge amount 
> to be desired.  If you've ever used it, you'll know that you have to 
> pick the right version from about eight different program image files, 
> otherwise it will mysteriously hang or reboot.  You also have to, 
> somewhat madly, use different names for the program image file according 
> to whether you are using FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32.  It's quite nutty.
> 
> Not any more.
> 
> To complement the MBR with EFI partition table support, that I mentioned 
> a couple of weeks ago, I've written a TAU boot loader for DUET.  This 
> uses exactly the same bootstrap process as my boot manager, except that 
> in the final stage instead of loading my Boot Manager it loads up DUET 
> instead.  It allows you to use any filename you like for the program 
> image, and it doesn't matter if one doesn't use the image that exactly 
> matches the FAT width of the containing disc volume.  (You've still got 
> to pick the right image for x86-32 versus x86-64, though.  I cannot do 
> anything about that.)
> 
> I now have here, thanks to both, a system with PC/AT firmware that has 
> an EFI partition table, an EFI System Partition, and DUET.  It 
> bootstraps directly to the EFI System Partition (thanks to the MBR with 
> EFI partition table support) and thence into DUET (thanks to the TAU 
> boot loader for DUET).  So it goes from POST straight to the EFI Boot 
> Manager, with nothing more than a few copyright messages along the way.  
> (-:
> 
> I've put up the step-by-step process of how I did it on a page that 
> you'll find hyperlinked-to from the TAU System Utilities page on my own 
> WWW server.  I've subtly named the hyperlink "Instructions for 
> installing TAU Boot Manager or UEFI DUET onto a system volume".  All of 
> the tools for following the procedure are in the latest TAU System 
> Utilities archive.
> 
> Once one has booted a system into x86-64 DUET one, according to 
> Microsoft, can install Windows NT 6.1 ("Windows 7") using its x86-64 EFI 
> installer, rather than its PC98 installer.  The EFI installer will 
> install the EFI versions of Microsoft's Boot Manager and Boot 
> Configuration Data, into an EFI System Partition; something that is not 
> possible to do with the PC98 installer.  (Beware:  Windows 7 requires a 
> bona fide EFI System Partition for this trick, not a Poor Man's 
> equivalent such as a System Reserved Partition.)  Thence one can install 
> Linux with ELILO and other EFI-bootable operating systems, and have them 
> all on the menu of DUET's EFI Boot Manager, which becomes the primary 
> boot manager for the system.  Combine all that with an EFI partition 
> table, and you get (a) no more headaches caused by the differences 
> between secondary and primary partitions; (b) no "hybrid MBR" 
> partitioning nonsense; (c) no more 2TiB disc limit worries; (d) no more 
> problems from boot managers that work as MBR computer viruses; (e) no 
> more dealings with "MBR disc signatures", "LVM info sectors", or other 
> such nonsense; and (f) the EFI Shell accessible at boot time.  Oh: and 
> you get 36 character Unicode names for your partitions, too. (-:
> 
> Unfortunately, one cannot boot IBM OS/2 or eComStation from the EFI Boot 
> Manager.  They don't have the right kind of operating system boot 
> loader.  So I encourage you to prod the osFree and the eComStation 
> people to make EFI versions of OS2LDR and FREELDR.

I send you an email  but did not receive a reply. We are looking at 
getting EFI support for OS/2 (well eComStation). But we would need to 
work togheter on that. I'm working on setting up a team for that.

Just like we have for SNAP (http://svn.ecomstation.nl/snap).

Your knowlegde on EFI on such a team would certainly be welcome.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

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Thread

Installing and running UEFI DUET Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-07-10 22:20 +0100
  Re: Installing and running UEFI DUET Roderick Klein <rwklein@xs4all.nl> - 2011-07-27 17:14 +0200
    Re: Installing and running UEFI DUET Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-07-28 15:46 +0100
      Re: Installing and running UEFI DUET Roderick Klein <rwklein@xs4all.nl> - 2011-07-29 17:18 +0200
        Re: Installing and running UEFI DUET Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-08-01 11:15 +0100

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