Re: UEFI firmware and getting FreeBSD recognized by default: who to talk to?

On 6/22/2019 14:05, Rebecca Cran wrote:
> On 2019-06-22 12:59, Karl Denninger wrote:
>> I use Refind for this sort of thing and it has (thus far!) survived
>> upgrades.  The only "gotcha" is that I had a Windows 10 "Feature"
>> upgrade that reset the default boot in the firmware to Windows; it
>> didn't damage anything but did require that I go reset the UEFI default
>> to boot the Refind EFI loader instead of the Windows one.
>
> I do like that rEFInd knows about FreeBSD, and it's one of the "UEFI OS"
> entries that remains. But I'd prefer it if a "FreeBSD" entry was
> automatically created!

It is.

All I had to do was put the EFI loader in a directory under the UEFI
partition and Refind found it.  I didn't have to specifically tell it
that it was there.

The explicit "set" command (which I issued under Windows) is to tell the
firmware what the default is; you do it once on original installation of
Refind.  The Windows 10 feature update set it back to default to
Windows, which was quite annoying but not really a big deal.  One
command, once, from the Windows command line (same as the one to set it
in the first place) was all that was required.

The danger with tampering with where Windows 10 puts its EFI loader
(e.g. copying Refind there after moving it somewhere else) is that
Bitlocker may throw up on you if you do that.  In fact you do have to do
things in the right order or Bitlocker's default configuration (at least
on a TPM equipped machine) will have a hissy fit -- you cannot change
anything in the EFI partition after initializing Bitlocker, including
the Refind configuration file (this most-specifically applies to the
"wait for boot time"; I find the default obnoxiously long) so you have
to make that edit and put the other stuff in the UEFI partition (e.g.
FreeBSD's EFI loader and Refind) BEFORE turning Bitlocker on.

I've been running this way since 12.x showed up since 12.x can boot a
geli-encrypted system directly on my laptop.  Works nicely.

-- 
Karl Denninger
karl_at_denninger.net <mailto:karl_at_denninger.net>
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