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@redhat.com Reporter: bugzilla@colorremedies.com QA Contact: docs-qa@lists.fedoraproject.org CC: swadeley@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?