Modify BIOS to non-uefi

[hexdy]

Hello, I wanted to know if it is possible to modify a BIOS file to accept a legacy disk when it does not have the capability, I had this problem on a Optiplex 3060 that were donated to my job where we use non-uefi linux distros, we cannot use uefi since is a "big machine" with this systems beign the center of all of it, we can't change the distro now, maybe make some changes, but if I can modify the BIOS it would be awesome.

[stj]

it would be simpler to use this and make a version for your machines
https://libreboot.org/

[hexdy]

it would be simpler to use this and make a version for your machines
https://libreboot.org/

That seems complicated for me, maybe one of my superiors might know, but since none of us are engineers this might not work.

[piernov]

No way trying to port coreboot/Libreboot to an unsupported machine (or even trying to get it working properly on a supported machine) would be easier than anything else.
Much easier to just install a UEFI-compatible bootloader and boot the Linux kernel from that. If the system is already using Grub it won't change much, although you need an EFI System Partition somewhere (a 500 MB FAT32 partition with correct type). This partition can be put on another drive (even external) if it's not possible to modify the main storage.
UEFI has been the preferred boot mode for 13 years so it's really time to move on from legacy BIOS, which is not supported on newer platforms anyway. Any distribution that does not support booting from UEFI has been out of support for a long time.

[hexdy]

No way trying to port coreboot/Libreboot to an unsupported machine (or even trying to get it working properly on a supported machine) would be easier than anything else.
Much easier to just install a UEFI-compatible bootloader and boot the Linux kernel from that. If the system is already using Grub it won't change much, although you need an EFI System Partition somewhere (a 500 MB FAT32 partition with correct type). This partition can be put on another drive (even external) if it's not possible to modify the main storage.
UEFI has been the preferred boot mode for 13 years so it's really time to move on from legacy BIOS, which is not supported on newer platforms anyway. Any distribution that does not support booting from UEFI has been out of support for a long time.

It's just that the higher ups on the "software" sector dislike to work, so, we have since a long time now the linux mint 19.3 tricia distribution, on legacy, we use a common hdd as a cloning station for multiple other ssd and hdd (we don't even work with m.2), since we work with donated systems, we sometimes come around with these uefi-only systems, which is a problem because of the before mentioned circumstances, I would prefer something easy to do, like transform the disks to kernel, change the bios (Only I can do it, since the ch341a is mine and only I know how to use it to some extent) or so.

[rogfanther]

You can use a small usb disk, with a uefi bootloader in it, as piernov said. If necessary, you can even install it with an extension cord inside the machine.

[hexdy]

You can use a small usb disk, with a uefi bootloader in it, as piernov said. If necessary, you can even install it with an extension cord inside the machine.

Hello, the usb would need to be with the machine at all times right? since that would be a temporal solution which is not what I am hoping for, since we have to donate this machines to multiple institutions we cannot send them with usbs, since we don't have much of those, my superior said he already tried making a EFI distro on a partition of the disk with the other beign the mint distro and it didn't work, sadly

[rogfanther]

While I haven´t got yet a machine that wouldn´t accept Legacy boot, I do believe that some exist out there. And with these "brand names", chances are greater. But IMHO, trying to modify the bios is much more complex to do when you seem to need some more simpler, efficient fix.

Since he can modify the disk partitions, as you said, the suggestion, as per above, is not a full EFI linux installation, but just a bootloader ( small program, like rEFIfind, grub, Plop boot manager, etc. . ), with the necessary partitions ( usually, some 500MB FAT32 partition only ) .

Or, just create two sets of disk images, one with Mint installed on Legacy Boot, and another with the same Mint installed as EFI boot.

Some work will always be necessary, but it is much easier to just do what you already do ( install linux Mint ) with little changes only on the boot mode, than porting coreboot or developing and testing solutions that involve many more modifications to your workflow.

[hexdy]

While I haven´t got yet a machine that wouldn´t accept Legacy boot, I do believe that some exist out there. And with these "brand names", chances are greater. But IMHO, trying to modify the bios is much more complex to do when you seem to need some more simpler, efficient fix.

Since he can modify the disk partitions, as you said, the suggestion, as per above, is not a full EFI linux installation, but just a bootloader ( small program, like rEFIfind, grub, Plop boot manager, etc. . ), with the necessary partitions ( usually, some 500MB FAT32 partition only ) .

Or, just create two sets of disk images, one with Mint installed on Legacy Boot, and another with the same Mint installed as EFI boot.

Some work will always be necessary, but it is much easier to just do what you already do ( install linux Mint ) with little changes only on the boot mode, than porting coreboot or developing and testing solutions that involve many more modifications to your workflow.

The "EFI or UEFI partition" thing we've already tried but didn't work, the other part is outside our sector, we can make alterations but they have the "source code" (The "software sector"), so I don't know if these are all my options, it feels that I am missing something out :/
I will ask them if they used the bootloader already, but I think they already use one, since before entering the OS they can select on boot which OS we se, since we use mint and other thing that I forgot, some kind of backup manager created by them, I barely use it so I just forgot to tell you guys about it, my fault.

EDIT: I asked them, my superiors, about the UEFI transformation, they tried already creating with grub as the bootloader, which is the one we use, but since we have like 4 sda, we don't know on which one is the grub configuration, we don't know why but when we change to legacy the boot then the grub stops working, it seems it is a "legacy only" configuration on grub, so, what I need to know by now is just where can I find information on how to create grub, so I can, by myself, create a grub and copy-paste the sda where linux mint (turned uefi) is, we already created a linux mint version by now (with your help, of course) but now the grub doesn't appear, and if it is easy to create one with a template then that would be better.

[rogfanther]

Can´t you use this UEFI-only machine as a template, install Mint and your other programs on it, and then create the disk images based on that ?

You didn´t describe clearly what is that you install on the machines, and what are your part on the process, but from the little we know , how about this :

- Install Mint on the UEFI-only machine, accepting the options for configuring as UEFI-boot, etc.
- Install other necessary software, specific to your customers
- Image the disk, and try restoring the image to the disk of another UEFI-Only machine

[hexdy]

Can´t you use this UEFI-only machine as a template, install Mint and your other programs on it, and then create the disk images based on that ?

You didn´t describe clearly what is that you install on the machines, and what are your part on the process, but from the little we know , how about this :

- Install Mint on the UEFI-only machine, accepting the options for configuring as UEFI-boot, etc.
- Install other necessary software, specific to your customers
- Image the disk, and try restoring the image to the disk of another UEFI-Only machine

Okey I will explain the best I can with the little english I know (sorry for the confusion), we are a bussiness where companies contract us for state related work, like pcs, where we get them as a sort of donation, we pay for them but it's so little money that they are basically donations, more like a garbage disposal, sometimes our clients donate to us in exchange for money their old computers, which sometimes are really good, some of the are uefi-only, we have 2 sectors on my side, the software and hardware sectors, I'm on the hardware sector, the software sector is really busy so we can't go and ask them for these kind of things, since the specific configuration we use does work, it's just that now are appearing machines that need UEFI, so we need a UEFI version, or a modification, since we use a "mother disk" as a sample for duplication, we can change THAT disk but we do not have the original image, the image has network settings, program settings, grub bootloader and more, we could modify some things but we cannot know or modify the network configuration because of security reasons, so what I need is a solution that we can do over the "software sector" already made systems, again sorry for the inconvenience, my english is really bad.

[rogfanther]

No problem with the English, probably my spanish would be much worse. Unless you prefer to speak portuguese

If the computers you work with change / are different ( due to from where you receive them ) , modifying bioses are not an efficient way to solve that.

Since not much money is involved ( you said the computers are free / cheap ), can´t your business buy usb drives ( small, 512MB to 1GB would be enough ) , to set this up inside the machines ? Would add maybe $1 to the cost of each.

Other than that, what you are looking for would be a way to modify an already installed system ( with linux, grub, partitions, etc ) to be booted in a UEFI machine. Am I right in this ? Since you are the hardware guys, would that make things easier for you , as a way to solve the situation without inconveniencing the software guys ?

[hexdy]

No problem with the English, probably my spanish would be much worse. Unless you prefer to speak portuguese

If the computers you work with change / are different ( due to from where you receive them ) , modifying bioses are not an efficient way to solve that.

Since not much money is involved ( you said the computers are free / cheap ), can´t your business buy usb drives ( small, 512MB to 1GB would be enough ) , to set this up inside the machines ? Would add maybe $1 to the cost of each.

Other than that, what you are looking for would be a way to modify an already installed system ( with linux, grub, partitions, etc ) to be booted in a UEFI machine. Am I right in this ? Since you are the hardware guys, would that make things easier for you , as a way to solve the situation without inconveniencing the software guys ?

We are talking now with the software guys and they will give it a try at the things on the post, maybe in a month or so they will come to a solution, the problem here is not time so that's fine for now, here it is very hard to find 4GB or less pendrives, and sending pcs with them would make them easy to steal/damage, we will wait, if I receive a update on this I will post again, if I remember when that time comes.

[rogfanther]

I´m looking at the commands to change a MBR installed linux to a EFI one. Can you confirme the exact version of Mint you use, and also maybe the result of running 'fdisk -l" as root in a terminal, so that I can try to recreate the same partition layout here ?

[piernov]

If the drive has 3 or less primary partitions you do not need to convert to GPT as you still have 1 primary partition left to create an EFI System Partition.
If the drive already has 4 primary partitions and you can't delete one or convert several of them to secondary partitions, then you need to convert to GPT. You can use gdisk to do that, it will try to keep the same layout.
Note that for a legacy BIOS Grub to be installed to a GPT drive, it needs a BIOS boot partition, which is a small partition of a few MB with a specific type at the beginning of the drive, but at this point this is irrelevant since we want to use UEFI Grub instead. However this will also likely prevent the current legacy BIOS Grub to boot, so you will have to perform the UEFI Grub installation step booting from another system and using chroot to get into the target system.

Then one of the existing partition will probably have to be resized to make room for the EFI System Partition.
Then you can create the EFI System Partition (500 MB, FAT32 with type 0xEF00 in gdisk) and add it to the `/etc/fstab` as the `/boot/efi` mountpoint.
After that you can install `grub-efi-amd64-signed` and `shim-signed` (for Secure Boot support, although I'm not sure everything will be configured properly for that), then reinstall grub in EFI mode with `sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi` and re-generate the configuration with `sudo update-grub`.

There's one caveat though, if you move the drive to another machine, the other machine will not have the necessary UEFI Boot menu entry that points to the Grub bootloader. Hopefully, the bootloader also installed itself to the default path `/EFI/Boot/BootX64.EFI` (in the EFI System Partition) so that it can boot even without a specific entry. If that's not the case you can try to run the grub-install command again, adding `--removable`.
I'd still recommend re-installing the bootloader after booting on the target system to create the appropriate UEFI Boot menu entry.

Anyway, Linux Mint 19.3 has been out of support for a year, so I'd highly recommend upgrading and this is a good opportunity to make a proper UEFI system.

[hexdy]

I´m looking at the commands to change a MBR installed linux to a EFI one. Can you confirme the exact version of Mint you use, and also maybe the result of running 'fdisk -l" as root in a terminal, so that I can try to recreate the same partition layout here ?

On the monday we will continue on our job with this, then I will send you a response, sorry.

[hexdy]

If the drive has 3 or less primary partitions you do not need to convert to GPT as you still have 1 primary partition left to create an EFI System Partition.
If the drive already has 4 primary partitions and you can't delete one or convert several of them to secondary partitions, then you need to convert to GPT. You can use gdisk to do that, it will try to keep the same layout.
Note that for a legacy BIOS Grub to be installed to a GPT drive, it needs a BIOS boot partition, which is a small partition of a few MB with a specific type at the beginning of the drive, but at this point this is irrelevant since we want to use UEFI Grub instead. However this will also likely prevent the current legacy BIOS Grub to boot, so you will have to perform the UEFI Grub installation step booting from another system and using chroot to get into the target system.

Then one of the existing partition will probably have to be resized to make room for the EFI System Partition.
Then you can create the EFI System Partition (500 MB, FAT32 with type 0xEF00 in gdisk) and add it to the `/etc/fstab` as the `/boot/efi` mountpoint.
After that you can install `grub-efi-amd64-signed` and `shim-signed` (for Secure Boot support, although I'm not sure everything will be configured properly for that), then reinstall grub in EFI mode with `sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi` and re-generate the configuration with `sudo update-grub`.

There's one caveat though, if you move the drive to another machine, the other machine will not have the necessary UEFI Boot menu entry that points to the Grub bootloader. Hopefully, the bootloader also installed itself to the default path `/EFI/Boot/BootX64.EFI` (in the EFI System Partition) so that it can boot even without a specific entry. If that's not the case you can try to run the grub-install command again, adding `--removable`.
I'd still recommend re-installing the bootloader after booting on the target system to create the appropriate UEFI Boot menu entry.

Anyway, Linux Mint 19.3 has been out of support for a year, so I'd highly recommend upgrading and this is a good opportunity to make a proper UEFI system.

My superior says that what you just described is more or less what he already tried, and it didn't work because of the system structure, we need more info about the software too.

[rogfanther]

Lets wait for the information on monday, then we can adjust the suggestions to the way things are on your disks