Re: EFI and binary distributors

[Robert Millan]

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 11:01:26PM +0200, Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 May 2007 22:10, Robert Millan wrote:
> > What is the recommended way for binary distributors of GRUB to support
> > PC/BIOS and EFI at the same time?  Is it possible to build a mixed binary
> > that supports both systems somehow? (and if it isn't, are there plans or
> > ongoing work for that?)
> 
> I don't think so. The size restriction is too severe for PC BIOS.
> 
> One possibility is to bundle binary images both for PC BIOS and EFI in a 
> package, and selectively use one of them by grub-install. But this has a 
> serious issue, on a EFI platform which supports Legacy Boot, because the user 
> can use both.
> 
> Personally, I think it is much cleaner to use just EFI on EFI platforms 
> instead of Legacy Boot. But this depends on a preference... For now, I have 
> no good idea.

Uhm sounds overcomplicated.  I think we can sort it out with two separate
binary packages for now (e.g. grub-pc and grub-efi).

> > Also, which are the cpu platforms that may use EFI?  From what I could
> > find, it seems that:
> >
> >   - ia32 doesn't have it
> 
> You forgot about Intel Mac. :)
> In fact, my Mac Mini is with Intel Core Solo, which definitely does not 
> support 64-bit.

What about powerpc?  Has EFI ever been used there?

> >   - ia64 always has it
> >   - amd64 only has it on Intel-Macs, and will have it on more devices in
> >     the future
> 
> Do Intel Mac have AMD processors, or do you mean EM64T? If you just mean 
> IA-32 
> architecture with 64-bit extensions (both Intel's and AMD's), the canonical 
> name in GNU is "x86_64".

Yeah, I meant x86_64.  I suppose I'm too much "debian tainted" ;-)

-- 
Robert Millan

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