migrating drives on UEFI systems

[Tim]

Hi,

On the old BIOS systems, if I wanted to swap hard drives on a system
(e.g. move over to a bigger one), I could clone it off-line, then swap
over, and it'd just work.

Should I expect a UEFI system to do it that simply?

And do secure boot options throw any spanners in the works, too?

I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it using
"dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" while booted from a gparted ISO on a USB
flashdrive (current release). Shut down.  Unplugged the old drive. 
Rebooted.

If it makes any difference, I can't recall if I plugged it into the
same SATA port on the motherboard.  It's a board with 6 sockets, and
I'm only using two of them (DVD and HDD).

I did get it to boot by messing with the boot menus in UEFI, but it was
quite hit-and-miss about what to boot from.  I can't remember now if I
selected the drive with it on, or the entry with the release's name in
it, but neither worked on the first boot.  It was a few reboots before
I got it to go.

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2020-06-22 at 15:12 +0930, Tim via users wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On the old BIOS systems, if I wanted to swap hard drives on a system
> (e.g. move over to a bigger one), I could clone it off-line, then swap
> over, and it'd just work.
>
> Should I expect a UEFI system to do it that simply?
>
> And do secure boot options throw any spanners in the works, too?
>
> I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it using
> "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" while booted from a gparted ISO on a USB
> flashdrive (current release). Shut down.  Unplugged the old drive. 
> Rebooted.

Surely if you're moving to a larger disk, you don't want 'dd', which
will just clone the exact same partition table and sizes?

poc

[Tim]

On Mon, 2020-06-22 at 10:28 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Surely if you're moving to a larger disk, you don't want 'dd', which
> will just clone the exact same partition table and sizes?

I was doing a quick and dirty attempt to get a system running.  If it
worked, I would have grown the partitions to fill the drive.

[Qiyu Yan]

Tim via users  于2020年6月22日周一 下午1:44写道：
> Hi,
>
> On the old BIOS systems, if I wanted to swap hard drives on a system
> (e.g. move over to a bigger one), I could clone it off-line, then swap
> over, and it'd just work.
>
> Should I expect a UEFI system to do it that simply?
>
> And do secure boot options throw any spanners in the works, too?
>
> I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it using

How it didn't want to boot,  did you enter the GRUB or just stuck in
UEFI or something else? I'd guess you stuck at UEFI stage and can't
enter GRUB.
> "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" while booted from a gparted ISO on a USB
> flashdrive (current release). Shut down.  Unplugged the old drive.
> Rebooted.
>
> If it makes any difference, I can't recall if I plugged it into the
> same SATA port on the motherboard.  It's a board with 6 sockets, and

For most motherboards, this will not affect if you have removed the
old disk,  UEFI will search for available EFI partitions.

But you need to recreate boot entries via efibootmgr or grub2-install.
> I'm only using two of them (DVD and HDD).
>
> I did get it to boot by messing with the boot menus in UEFI, but it was
> quite hit-and-miss about what to boot from.  I can't remember now if I
> selected the drive with it on, or the entry with the release's name in
> it, but neither worked on the first boot.  It was a few reboots before
> I got it to go.
>
> --
>
> uname -rsvp
> Linux 3.10.0-1127.10.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 3 14:28:03 UTC 2020 x86_64
>
> Boilerplate:  All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
> I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.
>
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[Tim]

Tim:
> > I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it
> > using

Qiyu Yan:
> How it didn't want to boot,  did you enter the GRUB or just stuck in
> UEFI or something else? I'd guess you stuck at UEFI stage and can't
> enter GRUB.

UEFI gave me its error message about not being a bootable drive.  I had
to reboot and try different boot devices using UEFI boot options.
> > If it makes any difference, I can't recall if I plugged it into the
> > same SATA port on the motherboard.  It's a board with 6 sockets,
> For most motherboards, this will not affect if you have removed the
> old disk,  UEFI will search for available EFI partitions.
>
> But you need to recreate boot entries via efibootmgr or grub2-
> install.

I was hoping that when I used dd on the whole drive, that doing so
would have created everything it needed on the drive.

Or is this a case of UEFI needing to be set for the right SATA port?

[Qiyu Yan]

Tim via users  于2020年6月22日周一 下午9:14写道：
> Tim:
> > > I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it
> > > using
>
> Qiyu Yan:
> > How it didn't want to boot,  did you enter the GRUB or just stuck in
> > UEFI or something else? I'd guess you stuck at UEFI stage and can't
> > enter GRUB.
>
> UEFI gave me its error message about not being a bootable drive.  I had
> to reboot and try different boot devices using UEFI boot options.

That makes sense, old boot entry doesn't work and UEFI may look for a
fallback and unable to find one.

Try:
 - Change boot options, make default device to your new disk
 - If that don't work, setup boot entry manually. Use a live disk will
be a good choice.
> > > If it makes any difference, I can't recall if I plugged it into the
> > > same SATA port on the motherboard.  It's a board with 6 sockets,
> > For most motherboards, this will not affect if you have removed the
> > old disk,  UEFI will search for available EFI partitions.
> >
> > But you need to recreate boot entries via efibootmgr or grub2-
> > install.
>
> I was hoping that when I used dd on the whole drive, that doing so
> would have created everything it needed on the drive.

**most everything** but by this way you didn't set up boot entry for
your disk in UEFI's nvram, you need to do this manually. But usually,
BOOTX64.EFI will be a fallback.
> Or is this a case of UEFI needing to be set for the right SATA port?
>
> --
>
> uname -rsvp
> Linux 3.10.0-1127.10.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 3 14:28:03 UTC 2020 x86_64
>
> Boilerplate:  All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
> I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]

[Gordon Messmer]

On 6/21/20 10:42 PM, Tim via users wrote:
> On the old BIOS systems, if I wanted to swap hard drives on a system
> (e.g. move over to a bigger one), I could clone it off-line, then swap
> over, and it'd just work.
>
> Should I expect a UEFI system to do it that simply?

In theory, yes.  At least I think so.  :)

Your UEFI firmware has a list of boot devices and paths to a 
bootloader.  On each device, it expects a FAT filesystem, in which it 
will find the bootloader at the corresponding path.  If you "dd" a 
drive, then all of the UUIDs for the filesystems should be the same, and 
the system should boot without complaints.

If any UUIDs do change, the UEFI should look for /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI 
as a default.  That file exists on your Fedora system partition, and 
IIRC, it will add a new boot entry to the UEFI list and boot your Fedora 
system.
> And do secure boot options throw any spanners in the works, too?

No, it shouldn't.

[Samuel Sieb]

On 6/21/20 10:42 PM, Tim via users wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On the old BIOS systems, if I wanted to swap hard drives on a system
> (e.g. move over to a bigger one), I could clone it off-line, then swap
> over, and it'd just work.
>
> Should I expect a UEFI system to do it that simply?

Yes, it should be even easier than non-UEFI.  No MBR and hidden boot 
sectors to worry about.

I just did this with my son's laptop a few days ago.  I booted a live 
image and used gparted to shrink and copy partitions from an HDD to an 
SSD.  Fedora booted up just fine, but Windows is really unhappy.
> And do secure boot options throw any spanners in the works, too?

No, you're not changing any signatures.  It's still all the same files.
> I tried this last night, and it didn't want to boot.  I cloned it using
> "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" while booted from a gparted ISO on a USB
> flashdrive (current release). Shut down.  Unplugged the old drive.
> Rebooted.
>
> If it makes any difference, I can't recall if I plugged it into the
> same SATA port on the motherboard.  It's a board with 6 sockets, and
> I'm only using two of them (DVD and HDD).

That might be the problem.  If you run "efibootmgr -v" you'll see which 
drive it's going to try to find it on.  You might have ended up with the 
DVD and HDD in a different order.