this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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hello,

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question but could someone explain me how a UEFI system boots, I couldn't find a guide online. I want to know because I don't understand certain GRUB commands and how it get installed.

I just copy paste commands from Arch wiki and it just magically works without me knowing anything about it.

all the different distros use different grub command parameter and it's so confusing. eg, Arch and Gentoo.

Arch command: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB Gentoo command: grub-install --efi-directory=/efi

why both command is different? exactly where does grub gets installed?

sorry if this is a naive question but i really don't understnad GRUB.

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[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 8 hours ago

I'm pretty sure UEFI systems don't make use of a boot sector anymore. They look for the bootloader in the form of an .efi file in the ESP or EFI System Partition, of each sata drive (maybe other block devices too).

also, the disk it uses is not necessarily "/dev/sda". first because it can be on any of the disks, second because that's not a persistent ID but something that depends on detection order

Especially with software being called firmware and not being called motherbootware or pre-bootware or anything that indicates that this piece of software is the very first thing that starts running during boot.

firmware is a pretty common term for things like this (code on chip that manages low level startup)