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1. Kelly 5.4.08 / 8pm

   I am no EFI expert but AFAIK, EFI “file system type” refers the GUID partition table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

   So it would be a matter of setting up the partition table with fdisk, and then the partitions would be formatted as normal. I believe you need grub2 (or elilo) for GPT support.

   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gpt+grub2

   I don’t know if you can use EFI without GPT or vise-versa, or if one always means the other.
2. Kelly 5.4.08 / 8pm

   Answering myself -

   From http://www.mail-archive.com/grub-devel@gnu.org/msg04946.html :

   > We can use gpt without efi; I wonder if we can also use
   > efi without gpt. If you can access the raw disk, any partition map (even no
   > partition map at all!) could be used, right?

   Not really. EFI has to load grub, and EFI only always knows GPT+FAT.
3. Matt Domsch 5.4.08 / 9pm

   EFI groks MSDOS partition tables too. You just need a /boot/efi partition with a FAT{12,16,32} file system, and right now due to a bug in Grub that Peter Jones and I found and fixed on Friday, the MSDOS partition table type for that needs to be type 0×06 (per spec it should be 0xEF - the EFI System Partition).

   grub-0.97-33 in Fedora 9 both groks GPT and has a grub.efi loader. It gets installed into /boot/efi/efi/redhat/grub.efi, which again needs to be in a FAT file system. The partition table can be either MSDOS or GPT, but if you’re switching back and forth between legacy BIOS booting which doesn’t grok GPT and UEFI which does, stick with MSDOS. If instead you’re going to use UEFI always from now on, you can use GPT for all its benefits.

   And of course, be sure your system bios provides UEFI. Few available today do yet.
4. jonrob 5.4.08 / 9pm

   Woah that’s a lot of information to get my simple mind around :p

   Focusing specifically on the task at hand (installing Fedora 9), I can just install the system as normal, but I need to a) set /boot/efi to be a FAT file system, and b) use GPT partition table seeing as I won’t be switching and am fairly confident my system supports UEFI.

   If this is correct, then I just have to figure out how to create a GPT partition table! Thanks for the advice all, getting started with these things is always the most difficult step
5. Jeremy Katz 5.5.08 / 12am

   The number of boxes where you’re going to want to use EFI at this point is going to be *very* small. The Intel based Macs, sure. Anything else? Unlikely.

   And all of the making sure you have a GPT partition table (that’s kind of redundant), setting up /boot/efi, etc will all just happen as long as you boot from efiboot.img
6. pirast 5.5.08 / 3pm

   > 1. When updating my Fedora 9 system, PolicyKit prompts me enter the root password, with the default option to “Remember Authorisation” - I’m guessing this isn’t a security concern as it’s what’s been selected by wise people, but why isn’t it a security concern?

   Just because updates in the Fedora repos are secure. I mean, a virus could install updates, but so what? It is not allowed to do anything else.
7. Robin Norwood 5.5.08 / 6pm

   PackageKit has various actions that we use PolicyKit to provide authorization for. When installing packages, we use yum/rpm’s GPG key verification before installing the package. Assuming you haven’t changed the default configuration, the fedora repositories have GPG checking enabled. So when you grant permission to your local user to install packages, it will only install packages that have been signed with the Fedora GPG key, or other key that you’ve trusted.

   This is changing a bit in the next major release of PackageKit, so we’ll have ‘trusted’ and ‘untrusted’ authorizations. Trusted installation of a package means that it’s signed with a trusted GPG key. We allow the user to ‘remember’ authorization for trusted packages (ie, signed packages from the Fedora repos), but you’ll need to enter the root password each time for untrusted packages, like when you download an rpm from some random website and click on it in nautilus (which you probably shouldn’t do unless you *really* trust the packager).

   Installing a new GPG key or reconfiguring your repositories also requires PolicyKit authorization, of course - each with a different name, so permissions can be fine-tuned.
8. jonrob 5.5.08 / 6pm

   Thanks - that was just the kind of reply I was looking for

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