usb-creator-hackers team mailing list archive

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Not sure if it's appropriate to raise this question here about
foundationa-m-uefi-support [1]

Quote:

"Intel Macs should *not* boot in EFI mode, because this breaks
proprietary driver bits; legacy mode will work better here. In other
words, we'll leave Intel Macs as they are for the moment."

Can someone expand on the "breaks proprietary driver bits" with
respect to Intel Macs?

I'm owning Early 2006 Macbook model aka 1.1 [2] and all models upto
Mid-2007 model use Intel GMA 950 and do not require "proprietary
driver bits" except for iSight firmware for the webcam. You can push
up to Late 2008 Macbooks which have Intel GMA X3100  (not sure the
sate of the drivers there).

I have succesfully booted my macbook with grub-efi when installed on
the hfs+ mac os x partition and "blessed" when booted in mac os x.
After i could restart mac and boot it with grub-efi, or boot into
rEFIt [3] menu and choose grub-efi from there.

I was planning on experimenting installing grub-efi directly in ubuntu
and getting that to boot. Also note that rEFIt can detected bootable
partitions/bootloaders on reiserFS, ext2 & ext3 (haven't tried ext4
and it's not explicitly mentioned in the documentation but shouldn't
be that hard to implement). If you are interested you can poke the
bzr-import of the upstream svn ;-) here [4].

It is good enough assumption that Intel macs should *not* boot in EFI
mode, but these older Macbooks are very valid candidates for testing
and even having it by-default / easy-to-switch to. (Fancy pants magic
in the ubiquity advanced mode ;-) or alternative install cd).

At least the current plan I have in mind for the usb-creator Mac port
is to partition usb-stick using GPT partition table, install rEFIt on
it and use that to boot LiveUbuntu (my mileage may vary but this is
currently the most optimal and future proof way in the light of grub2
on cd's spec). Alternative to do mdos partitioning table and create
sticks like the udev backend does right now should be supported as
well cause you do want to boot regular bios PC as well.

Personally booting intel macs using EFI will shave 8-10s of boot time
if measured from power button press, instead of from the point where
you have chainloaded into grub-pc & bootchart kicks in.

Have folks from mactel support team participated in discussing this spec?

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Specs/MaverickUefiSupport
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook#Model_specifications
[3] http://refit.sourceforge.net/ (recommend on macs for dual/triple
booting linux/windows)
[4] bzr branch lp:~dmitrij.ledkov/refit/trunk