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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How do I add UEFI entries to boot any USB device? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My stupid Lenovo "Thinkpad" UEFI doesnt have a real F12 devices menu.

It just shows registered UEFI targets that can be booted.

This is pretty catastrophic, somehow I got Fedora and Windows installed, but thats it. If something breaks, I am in trouble. I cant do a memtest86 even though I think my RAM is faulty.

So in Linux, is there a way to add an UEFI entry to boot just any USB stick? Or to boot a specific one, like with Ventoy on it?

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

rEFInd can auto-detect bootable devices, and you can select them during startup. You need to install it to the efi partition as your boot manager.

With a simple config edit and file copy operation, I put a memtest86 efi image on my boot partition, and it shows up as an option for every boot. It's nice to know I won't have to fumble around with USB drives if I need to test my RAM in the future.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thats awesome! But sounds pretty hacky... so I would remove grub and use refind instead?

Fedora Kinoite is built for Grub afaik, with the deployments and all. Not wanting to destroy that really...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use Fedora Sericea, another Silverblue spin, on my laptop. It wasn't hard to install rEFInd, and it coexists just fine with GRUB in my experience. rEFInd detects that grub is there and shows it as an option, like any other bootable media.

The rEFInd documentation at https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind is extensive, but the summary of how to install is

Download the zip from https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html
Extract it
Launch the refind-install script. If needs to be run as root.

That was it for me, but the full installation steps are available at https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html if you run into trouble.

The next time I rebooted, rEFInd popped up and I was back in Fedora with no problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Damn thanks! Thats great!

But for some reason my Bios works now, it shows USB devices, doing a memtest currently, after booting Fedora KDE and having a Win11 usb fail because of missing Lenovo Drivers loool I hate this OS SO MUCH.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

You can also chain rEFInd to GRUB if you don't want to mess with that.