rEFInd on a UEFI laptop in multiboot

[Martin Ivanov]

Hello!

I am trying to get multiboot a UEFI laptop (ASUS ZENBOOK PRO I7-7700HQ/16GB/512GB SSD BLACK, Notebook mit 15.6 Zoll Display, Core™ i7 Prozessor, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, GeForce® GTX1050, Matte Black) with refind-0.12.0.

My plan is to multiboot DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD und Linux.
I created an EFI System Partition (ESP) of 512 MiB, an copied there the contents of the refind directory. My main operating system will be DragonFly BSD, that is why I installed it first. I just can't get it to boot, because refind does not start. Instead, at boot I only get a black screen with the message:

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

The ESP /dev/nvme0s0 is a FAT16-formatted partion /dev/nvme0s0 and contains the following files:
1.bootx64.efi, renamed from refind_x64.efi
2. bootx64-dragonflybsd.efi, renamed from DragonFly's /boot/boot1.efi
3. drivers_x64
4. icons
5. refind.conf
6. tools_x64

To boot the DragonFly BSD I use an external hard drive, where I have DragonFly and OpenBSD in a dual boot with rEFInd. I somehow managed to get it to work there a year ago. At that point of time my laptop had Linux on; I installed DragonFly and OpenBSD on the external drive with an ESP having the same contents as described above. Maybe I have run a command from within the Linux telling the UEFI firmware to look for rEFInd on the external drive but I don't remember this.

Currently, when I boot from the external hard drive I get the rEFInd menu and I can select and boot the DragonFly BSD on my laptops nvme0 drive. I would like to be ablo to start the rEFInd installation on my laptops ESP. Any ideas what I have to do to achieve that? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,
Martin

[Roderick W. Smith]

Some comments/observations:

• Some EFIs require use of FAT32, not FAT16, on their ESPs. This is most common on older EFI implementations (from 2011 or thereabouts), so it most likely is not your problem if this is a more modern computer, but it may be worth adjusting that detail just in case it is the problem.
• You provide a list of rEFInd files on the ESP, but you don't say WHERE on the ESP they are. The default boot loader for EFI is EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi (case-insensitive), so if the rEFInd files are as you specified in the root ESP directory, they won't work -- at least, not without EFI NVRAM boot entries. Also, be 100% sure that the filenames are spelled correctly. A typo in the filename (or directory names) will cause a boot failure.
• The sort of message you describe might result if Secure Boot is enabled but your boot loader is not properly signed. Disabling Secure Boot is the easiest workaround.
• The sort of message you describe might result if the firmware is set to boot only in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode. Configuring the computer to boot only in EFI/UEFI mode may be necessary to work around the issue. See my page on the CSM for more on this subject.
• Some computers lack the drivers to boot from NVMe devices; they must be booted from SATA or USB devices. If this is a laptop that lacks an internal SATA port, chances are this explanation does not apply to you; but if the laptop has an internal SATA port, there's a chance that you'll have to put the ESP on a SATA device, rather than on the NVMe device.

If the rEFInd files are not in the EFI/BOOT directory on the ESP, I'd start by adjusting that detail. The others are less-likely culprits, unless of course rEFInd is already in EFI/BOOT.