Bit of a digression here, probably better not to pursue *this* on the
mailing list, but...

Am 30.11.2023 um 12:52 schrieb Joe:

On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:34:30 -0500
Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:

As I understand things, a well functioning UEFI system does not need
to use GRUB. The entries for Linux and Windows will be in the UEFI
boot menu, and you can boot directly using EFI variables.

It's the 'well functioning' that is sometimes a problem. I have a
netbook which, left to its own devices, will always boot to Windows,
and cannot be made to boot to anything else from the UEFI part of
whatever we're supposed to call the BIOS these days. It does not honour DefaultBoot, always resetting it to Windows, but for some reason does
honour NextBoot. So once Linux is running, a script sets NextBoot to
grub. Unfortunately, there's no simple way to set NextBoot from
Windows,

... have you ever tried

bcdedit /bootsequence <id>

In general, the built-in help of bcdedit is not bad, needs a bit of
patience, though.

And of course we lack the flexibility of tools such as awk or sed on
Windows, to automate setting things and still remain flexible :-)

On a particular system, with rather static setup, hard-coding a single
bcdedit call and automatically execute that should be feasible, though.

Give it a try if you haven't done yet!

There seems to be a lot of problems with the EFI commands operating
BIOSes properly, so I wonder if good old MS requires compliant
manufacturers to get it wrong deliberately.

Well...

... probably yes. But that's MS and their hardware partners for you.
It's getting better the more MS loses interest in actually selling Windows.


Cheers,

Arno

--
Arno Lehmann

IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück

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On Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:27:59 +0100
Arno Lehmann <al@its-lehmann.de> wrote:

... have you ever tried

bcdedit /bootsequence <id>

In general, the built-in help of bcdedit is not bad, needs a bit of
patience, though.

And of course we lack the flexibility of tools such as awk or sed on
Windows, to automate setting things and still remain flexible :-)

On a particular system, with rather static setup, hard-coding a
single bcdedit call and automatically execute that should be
feasible, though.

Give it a try if you haven't done yet!

I have used it in the past, when Windows moved away from boot.ini. That
was probably XP, so about twenty years ago.

I believe using it to write currently requires booting to Safe Mode,
and if I've got to reboot, it might as well be to the Debian install
disc/USB. Having got to chroot, I just use the up-arrow and it remembers
the efibootmgr command I used last time.

I haven't looked for a while, if it's possible to set NextBoot from
normal Windows it would be worth doing.

--
Joe

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For the curious, I occasionally need to run Microchip MPLAB, the old
pre-Java version which doesn't do Linux. It only just about does
Windows... I used to think Serif software was buggy until I tried
Microchip stuff.

Setting it up might take some work (especially if you need it to have
direct access to some of your hardware) but running it inside a VM
might save you a fair bit of trouble in the long run.


Stefan

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