RE: debian-installer grub-efi test image

Hi Adrian.

First of all, I just tested the CD based installation and it seems to be working fine. I didn’t install all the way, but I got to the point where setup is running, and media is detected. I don’t think going forward from this point is relevant just for the purpose of testing ELILO vs GRUB.


>  Okay, I wasn't aware that you were going this way. Please always include your
individual steps of your installation procedure that I understand what you
did.

In a nutshell, I untar-ed the netinstall tarball into my EFI partition:

Directory of: fs0:\EFI\debian\debian-installer\ia64

  04/28/19  07:01p <DIR>          4,096  .
  04/28/19  07:01p <DIR>          4,096  ..
  04/19/19  08:45p              778,240  bootnetia64.efi
  04/19/19  08:45p <DIR>          4,096  grub
  04/19/19  08:45p           28,584,558  initrd.gz
  04/19/19  08:45p            8,035,889  linux
          3 File(s)  37,398,687 bytes
          3 Dir(s)

Then I try to execute the install. 

       fs0:\EFI\debian\debian-installer\ia64> bootnetia64.efi

The result is:

                        GNU GRUB  version 2.02+dfsg1-17

   Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible
   device or file completions.

grub> ls
(hd0) (cd0)
grub>


> What did you replace the EFI executable with? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

I replace the "bootnetia64.efi" that came in the debian-install tarball with the "grubia64.efi" that is put into the EFI partition when you install the OS. If you run that grubia64.efi instead, then the output is:

                        GNU GRUB  version 2.02+dfsg1-17

   Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible
   device or file completions. ESC at any time exits.


grub> ls
(hd0) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1) (cd0)
grub>

So, from that point on I can 

       grub> configfile (hd0,gpt1)/efi/debian/debian-installer/ia64/grub/grub.cfg

And setup will proceed correctly. So, this is what mean by “replacing the executable”. In a nutshell replacing bootnetia64.efi with bootnetia64.efi and keep everything else in the tarball.

_____
Pedro