On 03/30/2016 09:53 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 09:26:11AM -0500, Mario Limonciello wrote: >> As Jared was mentioning to me the other day, there is unfortunately a >> mentality in the server world of not installing the OS in UEFI yet and >> leave the CSM enabled. The best way to allow for that mentality to >> break is to allow an easy way for an admin to switch to UEFI mode >> without re-installation. > Or perhaps you could have a dialog box telling the user: > > You booted in legacy mode. It is recommended to boot in UEFI mode if > posible to gain some benefits: > - list of benefits > > That seems like a lot less trouble. I think this is a great first step out of this thread. The challenge I see with this is how you identify a machine that happens to be running a BIOS that actually supports running in a UEFI mode.
If the system supports SMBIOS 2.3 or later, then the BIOS characteristics extension byte 2 bit 3 should indicate that UEFI is supported. Where in the installer would this dialog land? Somewhere early on in d-i I'd think after you picked your language but before you've gotten to partitioning. > >> Yes, this will only help people wiling to reformat their disk. I think >> if Debian can lead the way in switching to GPT by default it can be a >> role model for other distributions to make this change as well. > Again, if you want to lead that, then tell people to switch their system > to UEFI before installing. Don't do it by making a hack job install > that can cause lots of problems later. > >> To me this is an acceptable compromise. >> >> IIRC there is a debconf question about installing to the removable path >> when you install EFI GRUB2. What are the defaults for this? >> Would you consider making the default yes if you identify they are >> running in legacy mode when you install the EFI GRUB2 (to do this >> bootloader switch). > That could be a useful feature. > > A simple tool to change a disk from MBR to GPT without changing the > placement of partitions could also be handy. That could REALLY help > people to move to GPT. You would have to find a way to make room for > the ESP or BIOS Boot Partition though. > I'm assuming simple is a relative term. You would have to be able to resize a filesystem in order to make another partition for the ESP. Then you also could run into a situation of a system that wouldn't like an ESP that it finds later in the disk. I don't know how common this problem is.
