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About 2 years back, I set up a home media server and gateway using Linux (gentoo). It uses a Gigabyte H77N-Wifi motherboard, which is UEFI compatible. For some long forgotten reason (I think GRUB2 wasn't gentoo recommended yet?), I instead opted to go the BIOS route. Since the drive I'm using is 3TB, I had to partition it using GPT. Now I'm looking into making the switch to GRUB2 and I need to setup a BIOS boot partition for it. code:Now, as much as I enjoy being "up to date", I don't actually need to do this since GRUB legacy will keep on working just fine. If this isn't safe to do, I'll just can GRUB2 and keep on trucking. Not to mention that if I wanted to be up to date, I should do the full monty and switch to UEFI. But somehow that seems even more risky to do on an existing system. Can I safely do either of those? Should I stick to legacy?
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Mar 6, 2015 20:30
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Jan posted:About 2 years back, I set up a home media server and gateway using Linux (gentoo). It uses a Gigabyte H77N-Wifi motherboard, which is UEFI compatible. For some long forgotten reason (I think GRUB2 wasn't gentoo recommended yet?), I instead opted to go the BIOS route. Since the drive I'm using is 3TB, I had to partition it using GPT. Changing your bootloader without having an alternate means to boot the system is always risky: make a mistake and you'll end up with an unbootable system. At the very least, have a tested Live-CD or some other "rescue mode" available that is independent of the bootloader on your hard disk. With that caveat, I'd say your plan is sound. If this is your hobby system, go for it. However, if this system has some important production role (like "keeping a non-technical Significant Other happy"), it might not be worth the risk. GRUB2 is different from GRUB legacy in several important respects, so it's a good thing you want to learn it sooner rather than later. Since there is also an UEFI version of GRUB2, the knowledge you'll gain from this change can serve you later with UEFI too. Microsoft's modern operating systems are prepared to handle two basic boot setups: A.) GPT partition table on the system disk and UEFI boot (possibly with Secure Boot), or B.) MBR partition table on the system disk and BIOS boot. So it follows that these two options are what the motherboard and BIOS manufacturers mostly test for. By choosing to use GPT with a BIOS boot, you're already stepped off the beaten path, but since your GRUB legacy works, it proves your BIOS can handle that, and GRUB2 should work just as well. Switching to UEFI is a thing that is best to do when you have a new system and/or a fresh OS installation you can easily nuke & reinstall if necessary. If you can split about 100 MB off your swap partition, you could make it an EFI system partition (= gdisk partition type code ef00, with a VFAT/FAT32 filesystem) and go full UEFI. Wait... In fact, since UEFI places no demands to the MBR contents (other than having the dummy MBR partition table in there), you could leave your current GRUB fully in-place while setting up an UEFI bootloader to the EFI system partition, and if it does not work, you'll only need an alternate boot solution that can be used to remove the special type code from the EFI system partition, and you can easily return to what you have now (at least in the viewpoint of BIOS/UEFI firmware). So it could be said that your system is actually in a configuration that would be easy to convert to full UEFI, if you can accept the 100 MB haircut to your swap partition. However, UEFI brings a lot of new things to learn, so going one step at a time provide a gentler learning curve.
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Mar 7, 2015 13:06
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