GRUB FOR BIOS and EFI – SOLVED

[Member madibi]

This is not a specific antix question, so I ask the admin to eventually cancel the post.

Dear all,
I have some old pc, a lot bios, and a couple efi.

I have also a couple of external hd usb with a copy of antix, where I installed my distro + all my stuffs. The 1st one is bios, so I can use it to boot my older pc(s), the 2nd one is efi, for the more recent pc(s).

The question is:

in case I want to boot a pc, I must first know if it is bios or efi, in order to boot it from the right usb-disk. And this is what I am doing so far,

BUT

I also observe that live distros generally don’t mind the above. For example the antix live may boot indifferently from both bios or efi.

So I guess that the live distro may boot with a “special” grub.

I investigated in the antix 21 live,
into the: /boot/grub there is no grub.cfg
and into the: /etc/grub.d/ and /etc/default/grub
I don’t see nothing special.

So may be I am wrong.

Is there any possibility to create what I would like to do?

Many thx in advance for your help

• This topic was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by madibi.

[Anonymous]

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There is no “special” Grub on a live ISO.
It so that on this antiX-ISO all necessary files for Grub (Bios) or U(efi) are present.

With the boot of the Live-ISO this recognizes whether it is on Bios or UEFI. is booted.
You can “look inside” the ISO with the command.

# mkdir /mnt/disk
# mount -o loop /media/Distris/antiX/antiX-21_x64-base.iso /mnt/disk

Leaving
# umount /mnt/disk

in mount the live ISO into your system and see what files it contains.

I don’t understand your question about what you want to do.

[Member calciumsodium]

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Hi @madibi,
I don’t know if I understand your question completely.
Perhaps you can go about it a different way.

Instead of installing on a USB, maybe doing an iso snapshot of your system and then use the live usb maker to create the live iso of your system on usb.

I just checked the live iso snapshot of my system booted up live. I do not see the grub.cfg file in the /boot/grub folder.

[Member madibi]

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Many thx for your prompt answer.
May be I wasn’t enough clear:
my aim is to have an external usb_hd, with antix, that can boot into both systems, both bios and efi, with the ability to automatically recognize which system it is mounted on

[Member madibi]

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@calciumsodium
that may be the solution, with a sort of persistence.
I’ll try
thx for your hint

[Moderator christophe]

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(I was too late. Already answered.) 🙂

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member madibi]

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That’s the solution to my problem, and tomorrow I’ll give it a try.
I am still curious if the solution I was dreaming for may be done 🙂
Many thx to everybody

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