Re: EFI amd64: boot.cfg goes where?

RVP <[email protected]> Sun, 2 Aug 2026 23:14:08 +0000 (UTC)
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Sun, 2 Aug 2026, DTB wrote:

> I'm using rEFInd to boot either MS Windows, GNU+Linux, or NetBSD, and
> each live in the ESP under the respective folders windows/, ubuntu/,
> netbsd/. I copied the NetBSD EFI loader from /usr/mdec/bootx64.efi to
> netbsd/ and rEFInd sees it, so I can get into the boot prompt and run
>> root NAME=NETBSD
>> boot NAME=NETBSD:netbsd
> and the system booted and I'm happily using it now. I've put these lines
> into a file named boot.cfg but now I'm a bit lost as to where exactly to
> put it in order to get the EFI loader to see it.
>
> My ESP is mounted at /boot/efi, so I've tried placing boot.cfg in the
> root of that file system and in its subdirectories EFI/ and EFI/NetBSD/,
> and the booter hasn't seen any of these. I saw mention of someone
> putting their boot.cfg in their system root but that didn't work for me.
>

I have a slightly more elaborate setup, with Windows, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, NetBSD
and OpenBSD on the SSD, and all the BSDs have their own ESP partitions (+ root
and swap). Windows and Ubuntu share the 1st (main) ESP partition.

On the OpenBSD EFI ESP, I have rEFInd too, and the whole mess is booted using
GRUB. So, GRUB is loaded first, and I can boot any of the OSes, and also rEFInd
from the GRUB menu.

If I choose rEFInd, I can then again choose what OSes to boot, and it all works
fine with NetBSD's boot.cfg being used as documented in x86/boot.8. I.e.,

- EFI\NetBSD\boot.cfg on the main EFI ESP is attempted first, then
- /boot.cfg is read from the 1st NetBSD partition.

Can you post your boot.cfg and partition layout?

-RVP