[NBLUG/talk] UEFI and CentOS installer boot parameters

[Lincoln Peters]

I'm using CentOS 7.1 on a Dell PowerEdge R630.  I hadn't bothered with UEFI
on any of our older servers, but this one has a RAID array larger than 2TB
(i.e. so big that I have to use GPT).  In order to continue using BIOS, I
would need to install a BIOS Boot partition, which I haven't found a way to
specify in a kickstart file (and I don't want to auto-partition my servers
or install the OS manually).  Which makes this whole thing a weird sort of
"chicken-and-egg" problem.

I did find that CentOS 6 works on the same hardware, in BIOS mode but
without any BIOS Boot partition.  Maybe the older version of Grub is small
enough that it doesn't need a special boot partition?

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 9:57 AM Omar Eljumaily <omar at omnicode.com> wrote:

> Which version of Centos are you using?  UEFI seems to be well supported in
> 7, but marginally in other versions.
>
> https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/UEFI
>
> Booting seems to be getting harder and harder these days.  I got a very
> popular MB from Amazon and had big problems with a fresh install of the
> latest Ubuntu LTS.
>
> Also switching from one motherboard to another used to be very
> straightforward, and now it's very tricky.  I always thought it was a
> benefit of Linux.  When Windows got temperamental about switching Mobos,
> Linux wouldn't.  But now that seems to have changed, at least for the
> technology, but not DRM.
>
> Omar
>
>
> On 9/23/2015 9:47 AM, Lincoln Peters wrote:
>
> I have a new server that can boot in a legacy BIOS mode or a UEFI mode.
> On a server using BIOS, I can boot from a RHEL or CentOS CD or DVD and
> direct it to use a kickstart file by adding something like this to the Grub
> command line:
>
> ks=http://other.server/ks.cfg
>
> However, when I switch to UEFI mode and boot from a CentOS DVD, I can edit
> the boot parameters, but the format is very different.  Most notably, the
> configuration is split across multiple lines.  I can find documentation
> that describes the new format, but none of it mentions kickstarts.
>
> I've tried adding the "ks=..." to the end of the line that specifies the
> kernel, but that caused a syntax error.  I then tried specifying it using
> the "set" and "setparams" commands.  Neither had any effect.
>
> Is there something else that I should be trying?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
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