Reimaging problems with EUFI

[darren2008]

Hi recently I had 3 Laptops to setup. All running Win8. The plan was to create build one as I wanted it and make an image and deploy this image to the other 2. I had decided to use Clonezilla but I couldn't configure the Laptop to boot to CD (or anything other than the HDD for that matter). I noticed that it was using EUFI for booting. Does EUFI stop us from boot from another device?

 

Soon I'm gonna have 15 Laptops to setup so I'd like to have a method in place.

 

Many thanks

[free780]

It depends if

A secure boot is on.

B if your boot media supports uefi.

 

You can usually choose legacy mode to boot using a bios rather than uefi.

[3s-gtech]

Anything I work on which will be imaged now has Secure Boot and UEFI turned off - just won't work with FOG otherwise. If you turn off UEFI, you may find that you have to build the image again though!

[PeterW]

Make sure CSM is enabled, it may also be called legacy boot.

[SYNACK]

Native EFI boot as above is only supported by modern tools that support it, Windows PE4 (based on W8) boots to it just fine and lets you image and keep the 10-15 second speed increase at every single boot. Personally I'd upgrade the tools to support it rather than turning it off, Secureboot effectivly stops rootkits too.

 

This is just like native SATA mode which was much faster and more efficient in most cases but people kept insisting on turning it off so they could run XP install without the SATA drivers integrated. The difference here is even more pronounced so even more important for the users.

 

We have laptops booting to the logon screen with spinning magnetic media in 10-12 seconds, leaving it in bios mode can almost double that and makes it more vunrable to threats.

 

You don't have to rebuild an image, just image it to just before the firstboot stage and take an image in a supported tool like WDS/ImageX then you can do the little tweaks to make it work with the new system.

 

I'm sure that FOG will get around to EFI boot now that MS has released secureboot keys and some of the other *nix distributions have managed it.

[Arthur]

I had decided to use Clonezilla but I couldn't configure the laptop to boot to CD

Parted Magic includes UEFI secure boot support and comes with CloneZilla, so you may be able to use that.

 

As @SYNACK said, Windows PE 4.0 (and ImageX) or MDT 2012 would also work.

[mats]

I'm sure that FOG will get around to EFI boot now that MS has released secureboot keys and some of the other *nix distributions have managed it.

 

 

Some of the linux folk are (quite understandably IMO) less than happy about working on free software which only works if MS says so. What happens with fog probably depends on which distro their client boot images are built on.

[SYNACK]

 

Some of the linux folk are (quite understandably IMO) less than happy about working on free software which only works if MS says so. What happens with fog probably depends on which distro their client boot images are built on.

 

Its only secureboot that needs that component and it is an easier solution for everyone than each of the 76.9 billion different distributions to work with every one of the hundreds of vendors to get their stuff working. Having a single boot component that works accross all of them is the only feasable solution and you can turn it off if you have a likeing for rootkits.

[mats]

"My linux box won't boot"

 

"Mine neither"

 

"Or mine"

 

"Fog stopped booting too"

 

... much sweat later

 

"It's secure boot. Disabled for all these machines"

 

"Any idea when it'll be fixed"

 

"Never?"

 

I'm not up on the intricacies but given MS's love of other OSs, I can see why you wouldn't want to rely on their goodwill.