[syslinux] syslinux starting a efi application

[Frantisek Rysanek]

Sehr geehrter Herr Obermayr,

as far as I can tell, EFI support in Syslinux is dud, and the project 
hasn't received updates for years. Sorry to say that, I have fond 
memories of Syslinux.

Regarding EFI apps to do (BIOS)UEFI updates, I do have further tips:

Does your (BIOS)UEFI have an EFI shell built in? If it does, you can 
start your update tool from a disk drive (e.g. a USB thumb drive) 
from the EFI shell.
Once you're at the command prompt of the EFI shell, you first have to 
switch to the right "disk drive" (or rather, a filesystem), just like 
in the good old days of DOS you'd have to start with "a:"
So here you start with
fs0:
...and go from there, just like in DOS or a UNIX shell.
https://mricher.fr/post/boot-from-an-efi-shell/#solution-temporary
Do you know the right cmdline args for your BIOS flashing tool?

If your (BIOS)UEFI does not contain an EFI shell, I suggest that you 
should somehow create an EFI-bootable USB thumb drive, and try to 
arrange a chain-load or startup of your BIOS flash tool from there.
Such as, I'd like to mention the rEFInd boot manager. 
   http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
Except that... I don't know how to add command-line args to the BIOS 
flash tool, from a boot loader/manager.

Or, perhaps better yet, you could probably find the EFI shell in the 
form of a binary file / chainloadable EFI payload, suitable for 
startup from an EFI-bootable thumb drive...

https://github.com/pbatard/UEFI-Shell

https://chipsec.github.io/installation/USB%20with%20UEFI%20Shell.html

Note that the EFI shell pre-built binaries can be found at various 
places around the interwebs, in different states of age/bitrot.
Newer versions generally have a better chance of having fewer bugs.
The upstream site of TianoCore appears to provide source code only.

https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/Getting-Started-
with-EDK-II

If you have a modern PC, your platform is very likely x64,
elsewhere called x86_64 or amd64, not to be confused with ia64 or 
aarch64 or arm64 etc.

Frank


On 28 Mar 2023 at 14:32, Johann Obermayr via Syslinux wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> is there a way to start a efi-application (bios update tool) from syslinux ?
> 
> best regards
>   Johann
> _______________________________________________
> Syslinux mailing list
> Submissions to Syslinux at syslinux.org
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> https://lists.syslinux.org/syslinux