On Tue, Apr 5, 2022 at 5:46 PM Richard Shaw <hobbes1069(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 5, 2022 at 12:31 PM Tom Hughes via devel
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
==
> Is it actually true though? You need to be able to find some
space
> for an EFI partition but assuming that can be done is there some
> other reason you can't migrate from BIOS to UEFI booting?
I actually did it manually several releases ago when I got a new computer that supported
EFI but kept the same OS drive.
I'm not going to lie, it was VERY painful and took me a while to figure everything
out, a lot of googling and trying stuff. It wasn't for the faint of heart.
I did it a few years ago when I decided to
(finally) convert a ~9 year old (at the time,
~11 year old now) PC from BIOS to (U)EFI
(initially my belief was that Linux support
for (U)EFI was not as mature as it is now,
which is why I choose to stay in BIOS mode).
However, I had thought ahead all those
years ago, and partitioned using GPT and
had reserved both a BIOS boot partition
(which was suggested somewhere during
that period) and a EFI system partition, so
I did not have to deal with extensive
re-partitioning steps.
As I recall it was not all *that* hard[0],
although I agree it was not at all well
described (and because I was paranoid
I had built (and tested) a USB emergency
boot drive just in case, although I did
not end up needing it (probably because
I had it)).
I will agree that there are enough edge
cases that for all practical purposes one
should likely recommend reinstall most
of the time (after the two+ tested backups
one should make, of course).
btw, since the time I did so, a red behatted
individual described the steps they used at
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/bios-uefi
which is clearly a proof by example it can
be done. Sometimes.
Gary
[0] It is always possible that I have
suppressed all the painful memories
as a survival technique.