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Archiv für May, 2013

Fresh stable build available: Kernel 3.9.4, UEFI Support and many more

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

After kernel 3.8.13 was declared EOL I switched to kernel 3.9 and moved the build system to GCC 4.8.0. Besides the new kernel this release adds lots of changes and improvements. (more…)

Fresh build with UEFI support (including secure boot) available

Monday, May 13th, 2013

I just completed a fresh build based on kernel 3.8.12 and GCC 4.7.2 that introduces support for secure boot. The ISO now supports four modes: If burned to a DVD it boots on BIOS and UEFI machines – the same when written to a USB thumb drive. Many thanks to Thomas Schmitt of Xorriso fame for helping me to accomplish this. I have also rewritten the scripts that do the conversion from the raw ISO written to thumbdrive from a MBR partitioned HDD to a GPT partitioned disk with two boot partitions – one for UEFI and one with legacy MBR for BIOS.

UEFI should work flawless on most machines, you just have to add the hash of the kernel /l308sf.efi to your MOK database – upon first boot you are prompted to do so. There are still some features that are not yet complete. For example the safe startup or options for VNC access are not yet included into the boot menu used on UEFI machines. The build is generally considered “Gamma” quality. I assume there won’t be more builds based on kernel 3.8 since this is declared deprecated. I have begun moving to 3.9, so expect some Beta builds based on 3.9 and GCC 4.8 soon.

There will be some major changes for builders ahead. If you plan to do builds based on this or later releases, please contact me.