For those needing a summary. Let's say you have Win10 and you would like Win8 and Linux. Install BIU. No partition or Free Space is necessary for the install. It installs into the EFI System Partition. BIU will create a Boot Item for you. You are ready to boot Win10. Create a NTFS partition for the future Win8. This is done in BIU Partition Work. Boot Win8 media and install to the just created partition. BIU will create a new Boot Item for you. You are ready to boot Win10 and Win8. Create a Linux Native partition for the future Linux OS. This is done in BIU Partition Work. Boot Linux media and install to the just created partition. BIU will create a new Boot Item for you. You are ready to boot Win10, Win8 and Linux.
Hello @Brian K, A few questions to verify the way I understand your post # 78 concerning BootNow within IFL: In my case it is called "Windows 10". Already done Code: #! /bin/sh mount -t efivarfs none /sys/firmware/efi/efivars cd scripts ./bootnowu win10 I replace the "win10" with whatever name corresponds to my entry in the BIU boot menu. In my case this is "Windows 10" so the last line would be "./bootnowu Windows 10". The script should be saved with the ".sh" file extension. I can do this directly to the UFD or the IFL partition, or to my main TeraByte IFL folder in Windows prior to using makedisk. Repeat the above for any other BootNow shortcuts that I want to add. I think I understand it all correctly, so I will do a test run either later tonight or tomorrow.
Hello @Brian K, I see from this thread: Executable script in Cinnamon 19, that you are working on refining BootNow from within Mint 19. I have a favor to ask... Whenever you get the procedure down to the way you want it, could you please post it here? Since I am new to Linux, I am not yet able to try to figure this out for myself. It will be greatly appreciated !
Hello @Brian K, On a side note: I was sure that we had discussed how to use BootNow from within TBWinRE but for the life of me I can not find that post... Have you tried this yet? If you have already posted about this, could you point me to that post? (I apologize if we have already discussed this ...) Is there any reason that when I update my TBWinRE and IFL partitions that I can not do it from within Windows as long as I leave drive letters assigned to the two partitions? This would eliminate having to boot to the BIU Maintenance screen and doing it there... (And I assume that you can not assign a drive letter for Mint?)
Kent, That's fine. Temporarily give IFL partition a drive letter. When you create the script, copy the code into Wordpad, not Notepad. Save it with a .sh extension. Wordpad formatting seems more suitable for these scripts. To run the script, right click the IFL desktop, Display User Scripts Menu, select the sacript.
Kent, I'm happy with this. In my Home directory I created a folder called bjk. In bjk I created another folder called bn. bootnowu (Linux file) was copied into bn. Use you own folder names. Open Terminal and... cd bjk/bn ./bootnowu You should get a "command not found" error indicating you need 32-bit libraries. Open Terminal and enter... sudo apt-get install lib32ncursesw5 sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32stdc++6 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32z1 sudo chmod +x bjk/bn/bootnowu Now try... cd bjk/bn ./bootnowu You should see around ten lines of text about bootnowu. Right click bootnowu, Properties, Permissions tab. Make sure there is a tick in “Allow executing file as program” In bjk/bn folder right click, Create New Document, Empty Document. Rename it to ifl.sh Right click and Open with Text Editor. Enter this into the document and save. Code: #! /bin/sh echo password | sudo -S bjk/bn/bootnowu ifl reboot password is your Login password ifl is one of my Boot Items there is a space before and after | there is a space before and after -S (Capital S) To run the script, open ifl.sh in Text Editor, sweep the second and third lines and click Copy Open Terminal and Paste. No need to press Enter as the computer immediately restarts. Edit... If you don't like exposing your password you could use... Code: sudo bjk/bn/bootnowu ifl reboot
Hello @Brian K, Thank you for verifying my posts and answering my question. Your posts will give me something to play around with over the next couple of days. I originally had thought that I would not use BootNow anywhere but in Windows but the learner and tinkerer in me could not resist. I may or may not use it in IFL or Mint but I will give myself to options to do so in any case. It will be a learning experience for me and to be honest, this is the kind of thing that makes computers fun for me ...
Hello @Brian K, Just a progress report... I did the above and got a "permission denied" error but proceeded with the rest of the steps anyway. I now have BootNow on my IFL UFD, IFL partition, and Mint partition. All scripts work with no issues. I now have BootNow fully incorporated everywhere except TBWiinRE (not supported). Thanks for all of your help. On a side note... Grub updated for the third time since Mint was installed today. I am now at version grub-install (GRUB) 2.02-2ubuntu8.2. I had to once again re-activate BIU so it seems that it is almost certain that the Grub updates are the cause. It is strange though that on your install of Mint Grub has not yet updated...
Kent, In my ubuntu.001 folder the date for shimx64.efi and grubx64.efi is 30 June. Do you have a more recent date?
You were correct about mirrors. I changed mirrors, updated the cache and installed updates. I now have grub 2.02-2ubuntu8.2 I chose to keep the grub cfg file we edited. The dates in ubuntu.001 are 24 July. I had to re-activate BIU.
Hello @Brian K, My dates were 23 July (probably time zone differences as we are on the same version now). Mirrors were all I could think of assuming that my Mint was updating correctly.
A bit disapointed with BootIt UEFI. Personally I find it inferior to the BootIt BM. The partition manager and the backup manager are good.(... on mac efi and pc uefi you can use a fat32 IFL partition for the job, so not really needed at least for me). But I expected the bootmanager to be at least on the same level of rEFInd boot manager or Clover Boot Loader (when using the UEFI firmware directly). As it is now is a little better than the UEFI bootmanager included in the various firmware of the motherboards...
@Brian K Hi Brian, have you managed to hide partitions with bootit-uefi? I cannot figure how to do it (and terabyte manuals do not help)
Panagiotis, Sure. I have about 6 different Windows OS and each is hidden from the others. In Boot Edit do you have the Item with a tick in Rename Directory? In GPT details, select the partition you want to hide and press the Space bar on your keyboard. Or right click the item, Properties, Hide. This changes the Partition Type to "BootIt Hidden". But I suspect you have already tried this and failed? In my computer I'd put BIU on a par with BIBM. Everything works as it should.
To confirm that I got it right. 1. I must enable (tick) the box rename directory and 2. I must enable the (tick) the hide option in the properties of the partition. Correct? I cannot perform it right now (I'm re-installing debian but will test it when it finishes)... Even though I think I enabled those yesterday (not so sure if I left enabled the rename directory) edit: I just checked. Those are the settings I used... but still Debian "displays" all the partitions... I guess I'll have to hide them from inside the OS... the only problem is that grub ususally do not respect that setting and I'll have to modify it everytime it performs a kenrel update...
After using BootitUEFI for a week I find it (and I'm being polite) lacking: 1) does not provide an option to remove or duplicate efi entries from the esp partition or to make a backup/restore of an entry 2) does not give options to change the order of the partitions but in its default restore settings ifd/uefi will change the order of the partition entries 3) the documentation is a bad written manual that has mixed references for mbr and gpt disks. e.g. from the manual "Important: It is recommended to hide all EFI System partitions except the one that will be used by the OS installation." and in the help manual inside booituefi "Hide/unhide: this option cannot be used in gpt drives" I use Bing and then BooItBM for almost a decade and cannot completely figure out BooItUEFI although I read the manual multiple times. I cannot imagine how hard would it be for a new user to get started.
I've barely looked at the manual so I haven't noticed any inconsistencies. You can use tbexplo.tbs (from Run) to do this. To remove old, unused Microsoft.xxx or Ubuntu.xxx. I use the ESP partition image as a backup for all entries. For Windows (not for Linux) you can copy out a Windows.xxx and rename it to Windows.yyy and copy it back into the ESP. You can associate Microsoft.yyy with a new restored Windows partition by doing a BCD Edit. (Select the ESP and click BCD Edit. Choose the relevant Microsoft.yyy) It's easy to copy a Windows OS and BIU will set up the new Boot Item. I haven't worked out how to do this with a Linux OS. But installing new OS is a dream. Create the partition in BIU and install into that partition. If you really want to make life difficult then have more than one ESP. So only have one ESP per computer. You can install Windows or Linux OS to any of your drives and this ESP will be used to hold the booting files. You don't have to remove drives as you do when installing OS to non HD0 drives as when using BIBM in a MBR system. That's not in my manual. Where did you see that? Has this helped? I find BIU just as easy as BIBM. More questions?
Thank you... yet another thing not mentioned in the manual... Don't see a reason to copy a Windows OS but I see why some would want to. As for installing a new OS the same can be done without BIU and is indeed very easy and straight forward; but that is because of the gpt/uefi architecture and not related to BIU. I don't know if it is to make the life difficult or because of lazyness from TB. As it is now you cannot really backup a linux installation without imaging the esp (unless you want to reinstall/fix grub after restoring In BIU "hit" the help and search for "hide" Yes especially the "run" "tbexplo.tbs" For me BIBM with bios added alot of value for multiboot systems... but with uefi systems I see nothing that BIU offers, (unless someone does not have an imaging app and a partition manager).
That applies whether you are using BIU or not. Or do I misunderstand what you are saying. With Linux on a GPT disk you have no say in where grub is installed. It goes to the ESP. Got it now. Having several ESPs causes havoc with installing Windows OS. For example, HD0 was blank, HD1 and HD2 each had an ESP. I tried to install Win10 on HD0. The Microsoft installer created 3 ESP on HD0 and gave this message, “Windows detected that the EFI system partition was formatted as NTFS. Format the EFI system partition as FAT32 and restart the installation” Of course there was no NTFS formatting. You don't get these Microsoft errors if there is only one ESP on HD0 and none on other HDs. Before BIU I was multi-booting a few Windows and Linux OS. But it was very time consuming and convoluted to set up. BIU has made this easy for me. My BIU multi-boot changes daily but currently I have 5 Windows OS, 3 Linux OS and several WinPE. I couldn't do that without BIU. Each of the Windows OS is hidden from the other Windows OS. It was mainly a test.
Restoring an old Windows OS image created pre BIU... restore the image tbexplo.tbs press Insert and create a folder in \EFI called Microsoft copy (while in tboexplo.tbs) all files and folders from any Microsoft.xxx to the Microsoft folder reboot a new item is in Boot Menu perform a BCD Edit on the new Microsoft.yyy check Hides in the Boot Item
Yes, did not express myself correctly. I wanted to say that instead of taking an image of the linux partition and offering a way to backup/restore the linux.efi, they added the multiple ESP configuration e.g. ESP1+windows installation, ESP2+Debian installation, ESP3+ Ubuntu installation. so by having multiple ESPs you can backup/restore different installations individually (1 ESP contains 1 efi needed for the system that is installed in the following partition). Got it. I only use 1 ESP on the booting drive and the other GPT disks (don't have esp partitions) so I never encountered such errors. Why do you need so many? The hidden function is another thing I do not like. I would prefer a real hide/unhide option that deletes/restores the partitions similar to the BooItBM
