Hello,

Just for fun, I have a cooked an installer for Slint64 current that uses goofiboot for UEFI booting.

If you have some time to kill, or are just bored, please go here and give it a go.

AFAIK it's the first usage of goofiboot in an installer after Solus.

So if you find bugs blame Didier, not Ikey!

Anyway I am eager to see your feedback, so thanks for your time.

Is there a risk of this bricking my machine?

I do not think so. goofiboot is only used to boot the installer, not for the installation itself (for that, elilo is used as in Slackware64-14.1 if you request it).

The only modification of your firmware can be the permanent storing of your preferred boot entry in a variable in NVRAM, or of the time out for booting if you change it, but only for this specific installer in both cases.

Thanks, maybe I'll mess with it then

Sorry for my slow brain -- is it the installer you want to test? So I should burn to USB then see whether UEFI sees it, or would I need to install?

Yes. Of course you can also install, but if it can boot up to the installer showing its first messages everything should be OK anyway. If you decide to install you will need in addition an external source of packages as they are not shipped in the installer.

PS In matter of brain slowness, you won't beat me

Shouldn't we be concerned by the goofiboot front page saying:chris

Well, when I hit F2 on this UEFI boot machine I see the USB stick I created as an option and see a list of various languages and the like for booting. I can't seem to find the relevant boot partition to set it in the UEFI settings when I hit <esc> but I'm afraid that could be my fault rather than anything to do with this hardware.
I'll keep the USB stick and may try again when I have more time to play.

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I depends who is "we".

That's probably true if by "we" you mean "Slackware", so I guess that Pat would agree (just a guess, of course).

But I do not feel concerned, as my goal, curiosity put aside, is to explore the possibilities we will have in the future to manage booting, especially on UEFI firmware as sooner or later BIOS will disappear. So I am trying to figure out what we will have at hand in some months or years.

Today we have nothing fully satisfactory as is easy to realize reading this excellent article from Rod Smith that summarize the current situation.

Let me quote Rod:Unfortunately gummiboot was abandoned by one of its fathers a few months ago in favor of systemd-boot, but fortunately this orphan was adopted by Ikey Doherty under the name of goofiboot.

So basically what I am trying to do is just what Rod suggested: associate the EFI stub (fortunately we can use directly the 64-bit huges.s kernel currently provided in Slackware current, that has a proper configuration: thanks Pat) and goofiboot (successor of gummiboot).

Also, I am using this combination only for booting the installer, not for installing, so that mitigate the risks.

Sorry for this long post, I felt the need of elaborating a bit to properly answer your legitimate question.

I gave it a try on my multi-boot virtual machine on Virtualbox. I used this vm to develop and test my customize rEFInd boot manger that I used on my laptop. Your boot manger boot up without any problems. Take a look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYMJsBeWnE
Note that I have to mount the iso on the virtual drive after the rEFInd boot manager comes up, then I press the esc key to have rEFInd refresh the menu.

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Thank for sharing, Richard. This kind of feedback goes beyond my expectations

Now I will try to use a 4.4 kernel that just made its way in -current and see if all goes well (or maybe better).

Could you please elaborate a bit? I do not quite get what you mean about "the relevant boot partition to set it in the UEFI settings" as no partition is involved when just booting from a removable device (as you would do with a DVD).

Also, what happens if you hit [Enter] with one of the entries highlighted?

A a reminder for everyone you can do that safely, it will just launch the installer as with a genuine Slackware DVD or USB installer but not change anything on a hard disk until/unless you decide to go further and proceed to an actual installation. Else just remove the USB stick or CD when you have seen enough to report your findings and reboot.

My apologies, I will try to explain:
On my laptop there are two ways to select whch device/partition the device boots. From -- to boot just once from a particular device or partition one presses F2 and sees a list -- the USB drive I dd'd the image onto is seen in this list and sucessfully boots to the menu.
The other way to boot from a partition or device is to change the boot order of the hard drives (which includes USB sticks) and involves, I thought, UEFI searching for partitions on any installed drives which can then be listed in the boot order. On my quick play I wasn't able to set the USB in the hard drive boot order to make it boot every time (provided it is left inserted, of course). I did think I was able to do this with a Debian installer USB though I admit I don't recall whether I installed the system that way or resorted to BIOS emulation but I am fairly sure I could add the USB with the Debian installer on it to the hard drive boot order all the same.

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Thanks for the clarification. This (mis?)behavior doesn't bother me much, as the installer is supposed to be run only once. Having to press F2 (of F12, or another key, depending on the computer) to be able to chose this USB key as booting media is acceptable, I think.

But, when you write that after pressing F2 the machine"successfully boots to the menu", did you go one step further and booted one of the language entries proposed? If not, could you please do that?

I agree that as long as the installer can boot it doesn't really matter -- I'm just messing around and reporting.
I did, breifly, boot one option and it seemed to work but I will mess about a bit more in the next few days.