UEFI and Secure Boot: The Hell I Went Through

http://prismdragon.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/uefi-and-secure-boot/

by Tsiolkovsky • 14 years ago

69 36 14 years ago

prismdragon.wordpress.com

I have been through similar hell with UEFI. Problem with building your own stuff is that you can't easily build tablets or laptops. Only OEMs do that. Since mobile is on the increase, so too is the prevalence of OEM stuff (macs, tablets, phones etc). On top of this, people are being forced into the cloud on what basically amounts to disposable computers (Android tablets/Kindle) by companies like google and amazon. Thus, it seems likely to me that DIY systems are on the way out, as is the support and development for that kind of stuff. Even gamers, who have long been a bastion of the DIY system market have cloud options now (onlive/gametap).

It doesn't bode well for the future. Maybe there will be some kind of online cataclysm that will end this madness. Who knows? In the meantime, check that your motherboard has legacy boot options. Or just don't upgrade to Windows 8 and vote with your wallet

noonespecial• 14 years ago

I feel the trucks heading for the landfills with a tsunami of e-waste thanks to "secure boot" like a tremor in the force.

rwmj• 14 years ago

He buys a machine, takes it home, and it won't boot => Take it back and get an immediate refund.

the_mitsuhiko• 14 years ago

But you could not complain on your blog then!

zepolud• 14 years ago

By far the worst thing about RMS is that his far-fetched, nightmarish scenarios have the tendency to become reality in a few years.

rickmb• 14 years ago

This is the one reason why I will always continue to take RMS very seriously, no matter how annoying he gets.

Also, since he is not just a prophet of doom but has spend a major part of his life trying to turn the tide, creating and inspiring stuff most of us have profited from, he deserves a hell of a lot more respect than he usually gets.

keithpeter2• 14 years ago

Yes, true

You might find that Ivan Illich might be worth reading for a wider view (Illich wrote before PCs let alone the Internet).

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

tedunangst• 14 years ago

bah, I've had nightmares about broken hard drives for years too.

keithpeter2• 14 years ago

"I didn’t need anything for gaming, just a workstation, so I picked out a cheap HP pavilion slimline (mistake 2) and a $100 Acer monitor."

Market opportunity for people who assemble Linux capable PCs?

Market opportunity for people selling reliable slightly older technology laptops? Plenty of sellers on UK ebay (their laptops are ex-corporate so a bit too old for here I suppose)

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Fedora-18-to-support-...

Opportunity for followup post trying a beta/testing install of Fedora 18?

guilloche• 14 years ago

My solution: not bother to buying any machine with secure boot.

mjg59• 14 years ago

Secure boot would have prevented the system booting from the unsigned CD. Whatever the problem is here, it's nothing to do with secure boot.

shawnz• 14 years ago

> Yes, I’m aware that OEMs are supposed to give an option to turn it off, but when has this ever happened?

Not "supposed to". They must. Why would OEMs waste their time implementing Secure Boot for the logo program, and then disqualify themselves by hiding the option to disable it?

freehunter5• 14 years ago

The ramp-up to Windows 8 has shown more FUD from the community than Microsoft would ever be capable of even with an unlimited marketing budget. This argument gets thrown around in every W8 conversation, "you won't be able to turn off secure boot!" The more it gets repeated, the more it might as well be true because people are going to believe it.

I just ranted about this happening in the Apple community; don't think it doesn't happen everywhere [1]. It's toxic, and I really wish there was more critical thinking going on.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377064

kbolino2• 14 years ago

Microsoft requires that Secure Boot can be disabled by the user, but only on x86. On ARM, the exact opposite is true: Microsoft requires that Secure Boot cannot be disabled by the user.

For now, this doesn't really matter, but the situation may change if/when Windows on ARM becomes a serious platform.

viraptor2• 14 years ago

Given the possibility to enforce it being always on... why would MS ever want to make it optional? I'm trying to apply critical thinking here, but can't figure out any reason to explain it. At the level that kind of decision/deal is made, what could prevent it?

What's stopping them from pushing for that once secure boot is widespread enough?

oinknotramen• 14 years ago

Secure Boot is probably one of the lamest systems in place. It's clearly a move by Microsoft to try to further their monopoly, and stifle migration to other systems. That's why you should only buy laptops from https://www.system76.com/, or http://zareason.com/, or http://www.emperorlinux.com/. You wouldn't have to deal with Microsoft's BS, and you would get a pretty kickass computer in the process.

freehunter5• 14 years ago

It's clearly a move by Microsoft to try to further their monopoly, and stifle migration to other systems.

Bullshit. I'll provide my reason supporting my statement: they require that it can be turned off. Now you provide your reasons.

tzs• 14 years ago

So to further their monopoly, they are REQUIRING PC OEMs to let you turn Secure Boot and add your own signing keys, and they are subsidizing the cost of signing for other operating system vendors who would like to use Microsoft's key instead of provide their own?

perssontm• 14 years ago

How are system76 hardware compared to lenovos T-series? Especially the keyboard is interesting.. :)

uslic001• 14 years ago

I am glad I build all my own desktops. Too bad I can't do the same for my laptop.

blinkingled2• 14 years ago

I wonder how Apple is going to deal with this Windows 8/UEFI situation w.r.t Boot Camp. If they totally ditched Windows 8 support it would spell at least a little bit of (well deserved, IMHO) trouble for Microsoft.

This really is getting out of hand Microsoft - this stupidity that Secure Boot is - it isn't solving any real problem for the user. It is only creating nuisance.

cooldeal• 14 years ago

Windows 8 will boot without UEFI or secure boot. So this will not make any difference to Apple.

blinkingled2• 14 years ago

Ah ok - I wasn't aware - I thought it was technically mandatory. Looks like to get Windows certified logo manufacturers will have to do secure boot. Apple couldn't care less about that which is good for Boot Campers.

Still though this whole thing is nonsensical - wonder if they were waiting for the antitrust era oversight to end (May 2011) before trying this schtick.

alter8• 14 years ago

> it isn't solving any real problem for the user. It is only creating nuisance.

That's the whole purpose of it - creating enough nuisance so that average Joe can't get out of Windows ecosystem. Each OEM will implement the disabling option in their own obscure way, and some of them will even fail to work properly. I remember when I needed one boot pendrive for each of my computers.

npsimons• 14 years ago

it isn't solving any real problem for the user. It is only creating nuisance.

And what makes you think they give two shits about what users want? Anyone who has been paying any attention at all to the computer industry for the last three decades would have learned by now that Microsoft doesn't serve "users"; they have always been the "safe" choice for "business" ("no one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft!"), and recently they have become dogs in the laps of the crony capitalist cartels of the entertainment industry. Microsoft has always been about anti-competition and locking the user to their platform; this recent offensive of "secure boot" just gives a bonus of the DRM that the entertainment racketeers so badly want.

edandersen• 14 years ago

Why is this utter shocking nonsense being voted up? Windows 8 boots and installs on systems without UEFI. Does OSX?

Metrop0218• 14 years ago

Yeah it's definitely rageworthy when that happens.

bcl• 14 years ago

In general, if the OS pre-installed on your computer doesn't boot nothing else will either. No Linux distribution can fix your broken computer and blaming your problems on BIOS, UEFI or Secure Boot just to get attention won't fix things either.

Secure Boot, when enabled, will not let you boot anything that isn't signed, including removable media. Fedora 17 isn't signed so SB wasn't enabled.

Expecting GRUB2 to work when your Windows bootloader didn't work isn't logical.

Like it or not PC's are designed for Windows. If Windows doesn't work on it, take it back. Very likely the harddrive had problems, this would explain it not booting and the install running slow as it retried when getting errors from the drive.

zokier• 14 years ago

> I didn’t need anything for gaming, just a workstation, so I picked out a cheap HP pavilion slimline (mistake 2) and a $100 Acer monitor

If you need a workstation, more specifically a linux workstation, maybe you should have bought a workstation. Like HP z-series which support (and some models even ship with) Linux.

> I did a first boot, and had an error come up that it couldn’t boot to Windows. “Well… Recovery media time!”

What error? If even first boot fails, I'd suspect hardware fault, which would make the whole post moot. Instead of trying to force Fedora on a machine that doesn't boot in the first place, more sensible solution would be to return the machine to the store.

> “Feature Byte” The system was using Secure Boot

False conclusion. Idk what "Feature Byte" stuff is, but it seems completely unrelated to UEFI and SecureBoot. Quick googling even reveals that some HP BIOS have Feature Bytes too.

> Yes, I’m aware that OEMs are supposed to give an option to turn it off, but when has this ever happened?

Is there actually any SecureBoot enabled systems out there which do not allow disabling SB?

> All this said, I refuse to support UEFI until some real standards are put into place and enforced. I’ll take something like OpenBIOS, but NOT UEFI

The UEFI standard is clearly at fault here, right? And the Windows Logo program is exactly about laying out standards and enforcing them. I'd also note that UEFI and the MS stuff are independent entities. UEFI is an industry standard, and predates all this secure boot fuss by years.

This blog post is full of plain old FUD, and it's sad that open source advocates spread such stuff. Especially in matters of such importance imho posts like this only cloud the real issues and erodes the credibility of FOSS camp.

armored_mammal• 14 years ago

I built my latest PC on a mobo with UEFI and had 0 trouble at all with Mint.

FWIW.

wmf• 14 years ago

I see 20 comments saying this is wrong; instead of endlessly rehashing let's flag this and get it off the front page.

UEFI and Secure Boot: The Hell I Went Through

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