UEFI Install Guide

This tutorial will show you how to install Funtoo on a UEFI system. UEFI, also known as the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, is a new firmware interface that is used on some newer computers as a replacement for the traditional PC BIOS. It has an integrated boot loader, so setting up booting is different.

This tutorial is meant to be an "overlay" over the Regular Funtoo Installation. Follow the normal installation and only follow steps in this tutorial when dealing with partitioning and configuring the boot loader (GRUB). All steps are otherwise identical to the regular installation process.

What Are We Doing?

This guide will show you how to set up your UEFI system to load the GRUB boot loader, which will then load your Funtoo Linux kernel and initramfs. This is the "UEFI + GRUB" method as described on the Boot Methods page.

First Steps

To install Funtoo Linux on a UEFI system, first you need to boot SysRescueCD in UEFI mode. To do this, enable UEFI in your BIOS, and if necessary disable legacy booting. After some fiddling, you should be able to boot SysRescueCD and get a black and white text menu instead of the traditional aqua/cyan-colored menu. The black and white menu indicates that you booted SysRescueCD in UEFI mode. Once you've accomplished this, you're ready to continue with your Funtoo Linux installation and partition your drive. See below for details.

Note

If the /sys/firmware/efi directory exists, then you have successfully booted in EFI mode and will be able to configure your Funtoo system to boot in EFI mode. If the directory doesn't exist, fix this first. It is a requirement for setting up EFI booting.

Partitioning

To set up your partitions for UEFI booting, you will create a ~500MB FAT32 partition on /dev/sda1, and set it to type EF00 using gdisk.

Command: n ↵
Partition Number: 1 ↵
First sector: ↵
Last sector: +500M ↵
Hex Code: EF00

This partition will serve as your Funtoo /boot filesystem as well as the partition that the UEFI firmware can read to load GRUB. Then you will set up swap on /dev/sda2 and your root filesystem on /dev/sda3. To create the FAT32 filesystem, type:

root # mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Your /etc/fstab entry for this filesystem will also differ, and will look like this:

/dev/sda1		/boot		vfat		noatime	1 2

Kernel

VFAT

Make sure you add VFAT support to your kernel if you are building it manually.

EFI Framebuffer

If you have the following option enabled in your kernel, then uvesafb and efifb will not be able to detect the framebuffer:

Under Bus options (PCI etc.):

[*] Mark VGA/VBE/EFI FB as generic system framebuffer (NEW)

If you have that option enabled, you must also enable:

Under Device Drivers-->Graphics support-->Frame buffer Devices-->Support for frame buffer devices:

[*]   Simple framebuffer support

This is the preferred method of using the EFI framebuffer, the efifb and uvesafb drivers will be used as a fallback if the above is not compatible.

Boot Loader

EFI Stub method

Instead of bothering with the installation of GRUB, you can consider using the UEFI firmware of your computer to boot your kernel.

Kernel Configuration

To prepare your kernel to boot with EFI stub, make sure that the following options are built in to your kernel: Under Processor type and features:

[*] EFI runtime service support
[*]     EFI stub support
[ ]         EFI mixed-mode support

[*] Built-in kernel command line
(kernel options that you want to pass go here)

Note

{{{1}}}

If your system requires an initramfs to boot, do not worry, you can build that in to the kernel: Under General setup:

[*] Initial RAM filesystem and RAM disk (initramfs/initrd) support
(/path/to/initramfs/file.cpio)

Grub method

Emerging GRUB

You will still use GRUB as a boot loader, but before emerging grub, you will need to enable EFI booting. To do this, add the following line to /etc/portage/make.conf:

GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64"

Then, emerge grub. You will notice efibootmgr getting pulled in as a dependency. This is expected and good.

Installing GRUB

Now, for the magic of getting everything in place for booting. You should copy your kernel and initramfs (if you have one -- you will if you are following the default install) to /boot. GRUB will boot those. But how do we get UEFI to boot GRUB? Well, we need to run the following command:

root # grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id="Funtoo Linux [GRUB]" --recheck /dev/sda

This command will simply install all the stuff to /boot/EFI and /boot/grub that your system needs to boot. In particular, the /boot/EFI/grub/grubx64.efi file will be created. This is the GRUB boot image that UEFI will load and start.

A more detailed explanation of the flags used in the above command:

--target=x86_64-efi: Tells GRUB that we want to install it in a way that allows it to boot in UEFI
--efi-directory=/boot: All GRUB UEFI files will be installed in /boot
--bootloader-id="Funtoo Linux [GRUB]": This flag is not necessary for GRUB to boot. However, it allows you to change the text of the boot option in the UEFI BIOS. The stuff in the quotes can be set to anything that you would like.
--recheck: If a device map already exists on the disk or partition that GRUB is being installed on, it will be removed.
/dev/sda:The device that we are installing GRUB on.

Configuring GRUB

OK, now UEFI has the GRUB image it needs to boot. But we still need to configure GRUB itself so it finds and boots your kernel and initramfs. This is done by performing the following steps. Since boot-update doesn't yet support UEFI, we will use boot-update, but then edit our /boot/grub/grub.cfg to support UEFI booting.

First, you will need to edit /etc/boot.conf. Format this as you would if you were booting without UEFI. If you are not sure how this should look, below is an example of what it could look like if you are booting from an unencrypted ext4 partition:

/etc/boot.conf

boot {
        generate grub
        default "Funtoo Linux"
        timeout 3
}

"Funtoo Linux" {
        kernel vmlinuz[-v]
        params += rootfstype=ext4 root=/dev/sda2
}

After you have edited your /etc/boot.conf file, run boot-update. If you check your /boot/grub/grub.cfg now, you should see something like this:

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

set timeout=3

  insmod part_gpt
  insmod fat
  set root=(hostdisk//dev/sda,gpt1)
  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3CFD-6884
if loadfont /grub/unifont.pf2; then
   set gfxmode=text
   insmod gfxterm
   insmod vbe
   terminal_output gfxterm
fi

set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
set menu_color_highlight=blue/cyan

menuentry "Funtoo Linux - vmlinuz-3.16.3" {
  insmod part_gpt
  insmod fat
  set root=(hostdisk//dev/sda,gpt1)
  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3CFD-6884
  linux /vmlinuz-3.16.3 video=uvesafb:1920x1080-32,mtrr:3,ywrap rootfstype=ext4 root=/dev/sda2
  set gfxpayload=text
}
set default=0

To get your /boot/grub/grub.cfg to support booting with UEFI, make your /boot/grub/grub.cfg look like this: