Updated instructions Partitioning the disk(s) can be done before running the installer or from within the installer. If you are in a graphical environment, you can use gparted. If you are not in a graphical environment, the installer will run either cfdisk or gdisk. New feature: the installer will let you return to the partitioner before proceeding, in case you want to change something. For UEFI Install: grub-efi-amd64 is installed. Near the end of the installation, you will be given a choice to install the bootloader or not. For BIOS Install: grub-pc and grub-pc-bin packages are in the root of the filesystem, and the installer will know what to do with them. Let the installer copy the packages to /target and install the bootloader. You can also skip the bootloader if you plan to use another. For 32-bit grub with 64-bit system: grub-efi-ia32 and grub-efi-ia32-bin packages are in the root of the file system. This hasn't been tested yet. It's probably easiest if you install the packages before you run refractainstaller, but it may also work if you let the installer copy the packages to /target during the installation. For BIOS install with GPT partition table: You will need to create a small partition (>1M), unformatted, with bios_grub flag in parted/gparted or EF02 in gdisk. Otherwise, you will need to boot from a disk that has dos partition table. More info: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html" ----------------------------------- old doc: UEFI INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS (EXPERIMENTAL) IMPORTANT!!! This doc is for the graphical installer. Read it anyway. You'll need it to use the cli installer on uefi. The manual steps are listed below, but they haven't been updated to account for the situation you are in. You must know what you are doing! For refracta9, grub-efi packages are in /grub_packages, and the installer knows what to do with them. You need to have a proper EFI partition - fat32 with esp and boot flags, probably around 200MB should be sufficient. You can create that in the installer or have it ready before you run the installer. Either way will work. for refractainstaller-uefi (run it from a root terminal) 1. The easy way: If you already have a linux installation on the computer that boots uefi, and you plan to keep that linux, you can use this installer, but when you get to the part that says you're ready to chroot, just select OK, and you'll bypass that step. If you accidentally choose Chroot, you can still skip this step by simply exiting the terminal window that pops up. When the install is complete, reboot into your first linux and run update-grub, or do whatever you do to add a boot menu entry for the new installation. 2. The experimental, semi-manual uefi installation: Don't mess with this if you don't know what you are doing! These instructions are probably not complete and can't account for all the non-standard variations in uefi implementation used in motherboards. And this installer has had minimal testing. (It works great on my linux-only Toshiba notebook.) Be prepared to hose your system. Read this: http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html This iso will boot bios or uefi. To install on uefi hardware, run refractainstaller-uefi -d There is only Expert Install. Leave the box checked for "Do not install bootloader" Create efi partition if one does not already exist. It should be the first partition on the first hard drive. In gparted, make a fat32 partition, around 200-300MB (or bigger if that causes problems) and set the esr flag. (The boot flag is added automatically.) When the script pauses, the installed system is ready for you to chroot into it and install the grub-efi debs. When you press the Chroot button, a terminal will open in the chroot environment. The grub-efi-amd64 deb packages are in the root directory, where they are available for installation. When you install the packages, the efi bootloader will be created. If you're running this on a system that already has the grub-efi packages installed, you can run 'grub-install' in the chroot (with no device named) to create the efi bootloader. If you want the bootloader directory to be named something other than "grub", run 'grub-install --bootloader-id=some-name' then 'update-grub' and exit. These steps now get done for you if you press the Chroot button. ** ** Add an entry to /target/etc/fstab for the efi partition (probably /dev/sda1) ** /dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1 ** mkdir /target/boot/efi ** mount $efi_part /boot/efi ** chroot /target In the chroot terminal, run these commands --> --> dpkg -i /grub-efi*.deb # Install both packages! edit /etc/default/grub if desired. --> update-grub --> exit Then close the pause window and finish the installation. ### NEW in 9.2.1 ### - If grub-efi is installed, there will be a button for "Install bootloader" that will run grub-install and update-grub for you. - If you have grub-efi packages on the live media, you can use the "Copy files' button to copy the packages to the target installation, where you can then install them in the chroot terminal. ################################################### If you created a separate boot partition, make sure it's mounted before grub-install. in chroot... mount $boot_partition /boot Then you can install the grub-efi deb and run grub-install as above.