EFI and fedora

[Bill Cunningham]

     In the days of mbr bios we could save the 512 of the HDD sector. 
Now is all this gone with UEFI? Is the bootsector of the partition, 512 
to 1024 or so bytes no longer valid? IS there specific locations that 
uefi files are stored in binary of the drive? Or, is that all gone now 
and we are just looking at files in text in partitions like boot/efi ?

Bill

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham <bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com&gt; said:
>      In the days of mbr bios we could save the 512 of the HDD sector.
>  Now is all this gone with UEFI? Is the bootsector of the partition,
>  512 to 1024 or so bytes no longer valid? IS there specific locations
>  that uefi files are stored in binary of the drive? Or, is that all
>  gone now and we are just looking at files in text in partitions like
>  boot/efi ? 
UEFI uses GPT partitioning, and uses a partition to store the files
needed for booting (which Fedora usually mounts at /boot/efi).  The
partition has a special assigned GPT type, but is typically a VFAT
filesystem.

There's no magic reserved space outside partitions that is used for
booting anymore.  The firmware finds the device, reads the partition
table to find the correct partition, mounts that partition and reads the
configured executables from it.
-- 
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net&gt;

[Bill Cunningham]

On 9/25/2023 4:44 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
>  Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham<bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com> 
> said:
>  ...
>  There's no magic reserved space outside partitions that is used for
>  booting anymore.  The firmware finds the device, reads the partition
>  table to find the correct partition, mounts that partition and reads the
>  configured executables from it. 
OK I see, thanks exactly what I was asking. So if for some reason you 
wanted to save boot code, I guess, you would save partitions and files?

Bill

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham <bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com&gt; said:
>  On 9/25/2023 4:44 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
>  >Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham&lt;bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com&gt;  said:
>  >...
>  >There's no magic reserved space outside partitions that is used for
>  >booting anymore.  The firmware finds the device, reads the partition
>  >table to find the correct partition, mounts that partition and reads the
>  >configured executables from it.
>  
>  OK I see, thanks exactly what I was asking. So if for some reason
>  you wanted to save boot code, I guess, you would save partitions and
>  files? 
Yes.  And maybe I guess dump out the EFI boot variables somewhere
(output of "efibootmgr").
-- 
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net&gt;

[Robert McBroom]

On 9/25/23 20:44, Chris Adams wrote:
>  Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham <bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com&gt;
> said:
> > On 9/25/2023 4:44 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
> >> Once upon a time, Bill Cunningham&lt;bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com&gt;  said:
> >> ...
> >> There's no magic reserved space outside partitions that is used for
> >> booting anymore.  The firmware finds the device, reads the partition
> >> table to find the correct partition, mounts that partition and reads the
> >> configured executables from it.
> > OK I see, thanks exactly what I was asking. So if for some reason
> > you wanted to save boot code, I guess, you would save partitions and
> > files?
>  Yes.  And maybe I guess dump out the EFI boot variables somewhere
>  (output of "efibootmgr"). 
all in /boot/efi, save as a package