[Bug 1221780] New: how to identify firmware types, UEFI vs BIOS

[bugzilla at redhat.com]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1221780

            Bug ID: 1221780
           Summary: how to identify firmware types, UEFI vs BIOS
           Product: Fedora Documentation
           Version: devel
         Component: system-administrator's-guide
          Assignee: swadeley at redhat.com
          Reporter: bugzilla at colorremedies.com
        QA Contact: docs-qa at lists.fedoraproject.org
                CC: swadeley at redhat.com



I'm not finding advice in documentation to identify firmware type. Should we,
and if so where should it go?

Identifying firmware type comes in handy e.g. reinstalling grub, see bug
1220066.

The problem is, users overwhelmingly equate UEFI and BIOS, often referring to
it as UEFI BIOS, mainly because OEM's still call firmware updates "BIOS
updates".

Two possible ways to reliably identify UEFI vs BIOS firmware.

On an EFI system:
# ls /sys/firmware/efi
config_table  efivars  fw_platform_size  fw_vendor  runtime  runtime-map 
systab  vars

On a BIOS system:
# ls /sys/firmware/efi
ls: cannot access /sys/firmware/efi: No such file or directory

----

On an EFI system:
# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0080
Boot0000* Fedora
Boot0080* Mac OS X
Boot0082* 
BootD1A6* AST
BootFFFF* 

On a BIOS system:
# efibootmgr
efibootmgr: EFI variables are not supported on this system.


Unknowns:

The first method always works since ls is for sure installed no matter what. I
need to test if efibootmgr is always installed, e.g. netinstall (?), it
definitely is always installed from lives. But if it's not installed, then it's
not a UEFI system.

How does coreboot firmware manifest? I think it's mainly a "better BIOS" and
should behave as such.

ARM firmware?

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