Question on antiX Live boot architecture

[Member olsztyn]

On the heels of the antiX Live boot technique question originated by Robin in the separate thread:
While digging into the Robin’s issue where antiX Live created with Live-USB-Maker is not able to boot on his machine, while the USB stick created with Unetbootin boots just fine I performed a separate experiment, which presents a question on the actual purpose of the 49M ANTIX-UEFI Fat32 partition:
– Built an USB antiX 21 stick with just one ext4 partition, containing antiX folder, along with boot and EFI folders. The boot folder contains exlinux and grub. Extlinux folder was built in a standard for extlinux way as outlined by Christophe. EFI folder contains the standard BOOT subfolder with the four efi files as stock antiX Live.
– Having built such custom antiX Live stick with just one ext4 partition, containing all such pieces, with no separate 49M ANTIX-UEFI Fat32 partition I tested such stick booting in both legacy MBR machines and UEFI machine. Both booted correctly to antiX 21. Just to clarify – as I understand Extlinux folder vs. original Syslinux in such composition should not matter as extlinux and syslinux are nowadays one and the same thing and use the same files…

So my question to antiX architects is: What exactly is the purpose of the separate ANTIX-UEFI 49M Fat32 partition with esp flag?
In my test case this partition appears to be redundant, but I trust there must have been some purpose for it I am missing?
Any insight into this boot architecture would be greatly appreciated…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member newmant1]

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Hi olsztyn,
1)But before probing into this, one need to know whether your partition is using Ms-dos or GPT partition format, right? Where GPT leave the first 1 M unformatted for booting purposes, so some prefer to leave a 100M for this area, if i m not wrong.
2)You posted a good question that i had in mind, so why is it there when the bootup does not use? for efi configuration? which stated must be Fat32 and was labelled /boot or need to change to /efi-boot when configuring in some other linux distro? I came across the same situation and share your query about this.
Hope the expert in the Antix-Team could guide us along, showing the ropes to the progressive learning curve.

[Member olsztyn]

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Thank you newmant1…
I am starting simple. Partition is MS-DOS.

newmant1 wrote:

You posted a good question that i had in mind, so why is it there when the bootup does not use? for efi configuration? which stated must be Fat32 and was labelled /boot or need to change to /efi-boot when configuring in some other linux distro?

From my experiment, which was to test whether the small 49M Fat32 ANTIX-UEFI partition plays any role, it appears to me that there in antiX world (I would venture to say in Linux world) it does not play any role. I have put the EFI boot files on the main (the only) partition and the resulting antiX live happily boots on my MBR and UEFI laptops.
My conjecture was that perhaps the small Fat32 partition in antiX Live was for some compatibility with Windows UEFI, but on the other hand I really do not see any possibility of Windows being installed on USB stick along with antiX Live, so that seems to be out of picture, so perhaps such partition configuration is some remnant from the past?…
So unless a reason for this small 49M Fat32 partition is found, why not keep it simple and at least to provide an option in Live-USB-Maker and ISO-Snapshot to configure antiX Live as one partition?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator christophe]

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I think the fat efi partition is for maximum compatibility. I think some UEFI systems would need it to boot. The ones that don’t need it would ignore it.

And antiX would want the most compatible setup. I think it is very difficult for antiX live-usb to not boot.

(But that’s just my guess.)

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by christophe. Reason: Tried to reword awkward sentence

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

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christophe wrote:

I think the fat efi partition is for maximum compatibility. I think some UEFI systems would need it to boot. The ones that don’t need it would ignore it.

Thank you… This possibility crossed my mind too.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member ModdIt]

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Pretty detailed information here: https://www.fonedog.com/data-recovery/efi-system-partition.html

Short explanation from windoze live cd creation site.
The EFI System Partition (also called ESP) is a FAT32 formatted physical partition from where the UEFI firmware launches the UEFI bootloader and application. It is a OS independent partition that acts as the storage place for the EFI bootloaders and applications from which the firmware launches them. It is mandatory for UEFI boot.

My big box will not boot without it, Part of the UEFI secure boot system.
Crazy part is grub is in MBR.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by ModdIt.

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