I just upgraded from Slackware-14.1 to 14.2. That's almost 3 years in between. :-) Here are what I did or have... 1. Single root filesystem /dev/sda1. For boot drive, you need MBR, but you can lump everything into one partition. When upgrading, - before "install", move all the old directories into /.old - during "install", don't partition or format /dev/sda (obviously) - after "install", copy files from /.old/etc to /etc, file by file but only when necessary (more later). 2. For non-boot harddisks, use the entire harddisk without partition, like /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb1. Yes, you can format EXT4 or BTRFS on the whole disk. 3. You can't just copy blindly from /.old/etc to /etc, because formats may be different, new options may be introduced, etc. - obviously, if files are the same, don't copy. cd /.old/etc find . -type f | while read f; do diff -q $f /etc/$f && echo $f; done find . -type f | while read f; do diff -q $f /etc/$f && rm $f; done - after that, diff and merge into /etc manually, file by file, vimdiff X /etc/X 4. If you plan to move the harddisk to another machine (like I do), then use MBR. Problem with EFI is that it writes the boot entry in BIOS. Well, on a new motherboard, boot entry is not there, so you can't boot. You have to dig into EFI shell, and manually select your .efi. -- William
| From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | 4. If you plan to move the harddisk to another machine (like I do), then | use MBR. Problem with EFI is that it writes the boot entry in BIOS. | Well, on a new motherboard, boot entry is not there, so you can't boot. | You have to dig into EFI shell, and manually select your .efi. My working hypothesis is that EFI is the future so I use it when I can. I am frequently disappointed to discover how clunky an implementation's user interface is. If I remember correctly what I was told, the EFI shell cannot be delivered with machines that have Secure Boot. Or maybe it is with machines that have the Windows Logo, at least recently. So I don't think that current machines come with an EFI shell. I don't know if an EFI shell is generic -- would work on all machines with the same architecture.
On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 02:30:11AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| 4. If you plan to move the harddisk to another machine (like I do), then | use MBR. Problem with EFI is that it writes the boot entry in BIOS. | Well, on a new motherboard, boot entry is not there, so you can't boot. | You have to dig into EFI shell, and manually select your .efi.
My working hypothesis is that EFI is the future so I use it when I can. I am frequently disappointed to discover how clunky an implementation's user interface is.
If I remember correctly what I was told, the EFI shell cannot be delivered with machines that have Secure Boot. Or maybe it is with machines that have the Windows Logo, at least recently. So I don't think that current machines come with an EFI shell. I don't know if an EFI shell is generic -- would work on all machines with the same architecture.
I don't remember see Secure Boot in the BIOS for the current machine. So, maybe, EFI can be run with or without Secure Boot. -- William
On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 01:55:13AM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
I just upgraded from Slackware-14.1 to 14.2. That's almost 3 years in between. :-) Here are what I did or have...
1. Single root filesystem /dev/sda1. For boot drive, you need MBR, but you can lump everything into one partition. When upgrading, - before "install", move all the old directories into /.old - during "install", don't partition or format /dev/sda (obviously) - after "install", copy files from /.old/etc to /etc, file by file but only when necessary (more later).
2. For non-boot harddisks, use the entire harddisk without partition, like /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb1. Yes, you can format EXT4 or BTRFS on the whole disk.
3. You can't just copy blindly from /.old/etc to /etc, because formats may be different, new options may be introduced, etc.
- obviously, if files are the same, don't copy. cd /.old/etc find . -type f | while read f; do diff -q $f /etc/$f && echo $f; done find . -type f | while read f; do diff -q $f /etc/$f && rm $f; done
- after that, diff and merge into /etc manually, file by file, vimdiff X /etc/X
4. If you plan to move the harddisk to another machine (like I do), then use MBR. Problem with EFI is that it writes the boot entry in BIOS. Well, on a new motherboard, boot entry is not there, so you can't boot. You have to dig into EFI shell, and manually select your .efi.\
That would mean not supporting drives over 2TB. Not working if the machine only boots EFI (some exist, and some are configured that way). It should be possible to make a copy of the grub .efi file using the default name which should get booted automatically on most machines. On some machines you would need a startup.nsh file instead. For example: # cat /boot/efi/startup.nsh fs0:\EFI\debian\grubx64.efi I have that on a virtualbox install running in UEFI mode because virtualbox's UEFI implementation is toptally @#$@#$ stupid and doesn't actually store the non volatile EFIVARS. -- Len Sorensen
On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 03:32:55PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 01:55:13AM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
4. If you plan to move the harddisk to another machine (like I do), then use MBR. Problem with EFI is that it writes the boot entry in BIOS. Well, on a new motherboard, boot entry is not there, so you can't boot. You have to dig into EFI shell, and manually select your .efi.\
That would mean not supporting drives over 2TB. Not working if the machine only boots EFI (some exist, and some are configured that way).
For boot drive, yes. My boot drive is SSD and 2TB is not in the near term future, so it's ok. -- William
participants (3)
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D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Lennart Sorensen -
William Park