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How to boot to EFI shell?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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  • 4
    4o4rh
    last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 11:56 AM

    I need to boot to the EFI shell command prompt, how is that done when there is no option like under linux

    S J 2 Replies Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 1:35 PM Reply Quote 0
    • S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @4o4rh
      last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 1:35 PM

      That's a very hardware/BIOS specific question.

      Most devices will boot to an EFI shell if there is nothing else to boot. There may be an option in the boot device menu. Some BIOSes do not include an accessible EFI shell at all.

      Steve

      4 1 Reply Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 2:07 PM Reply Quote 0
      • J
        JKnott @4o4rh
        last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 1:38 PM

        @gwaitsi

        That's determined by the mom board, not the OS. You likely have to press certain keys during boot up, before control is passed to the OS.

        PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
        i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
        UniFi AC-Lite access point

        I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 4
          4o4rh @stephenw10
          last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 2:07 PM

          @stephenw10 it is a new quotom box with UEFI bios. There is a bios menu option to boot to the EFI shell on the local disk, but always says shell.efi not found.

          pfsense is installed in uefi mode and boots.

          I tried with an ubuntu usb prepared as fat32 with the shell.efi and bootx64.efi but it just boots into the grub loader and not the efi shell

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 2:20 PM

            So maybe the BIOS doesn't include a shell to boot to. Have you asked Qotom?

            4 J 2 Replies Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 3:04 PM Reply Quote 0
            • 4
              4o4rh @stephenw10
              last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 3:04 PM

              @stephenw10 it's not included in the bios. the option is to boot to shell on the file system.
              I have the shellx64.efi on my j1900 (in production).

              how can i mount the EFI partition on the live system, so I can ftp the file off.
              I figured out, the system was correctly booting to the efi grub, but that is not the shell.
              i believe i need to copy the shellx64.efi to the root of the EFI partition and that should allow booting to the shell

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 4:03 PM

                Well you can do exactly that, mount the UEFI partition, which is FAT32, and copy files to it.

                Why do you want to do that though?

                Steve

                4 1 Reply Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 4:04 PM Reply Quote 0
                • 4
                  4o4rh @stephenw10
                  last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 4:04 PM

                  @stephenw10 i want to update the smbios and the dos version of amiedit doesn't work with this version of bios. so i need to use the efi version

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 4:13 PM

                    Mmm, can't you just boot it from USB then?

                    4 1 Reply Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 4:14 PM Reply Quote 0
                    • 4
                      4o4rh @stephenw10
                      last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 4:14 PM

                      @stephenw10 can't seem to get it to work

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 4:17 PM

                        Ok, well I would install something else to get access first then. You don't need to be running pfSense or even FreeBSD to update the BIOS.

                        Steve

                        4 1 Reply Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 7:25 PM Reply Quote 0
                        • J
                          JKnott @stephenw10
                          last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 5:09 PM

                          @stephenw10

                          I have a Qotom mini PC too. I have to press F11 very soon after rebooting to get into the BIOS shell.

                          PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                          i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                          UniFi AC-Lite access point

                          I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

                          4 1 Reply Last reply Mar 7, 2022, 7:22 PM Reply Quote 0
                          • 4
                            4o4rh @JKnott
                            last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 7:22 PM

                            @jknott you mean the bios setup, or the efi shell - that is not the same

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • 4
                              4o4rh @stephenw10
                              last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 7:25 PM

                              @stephenw10 smbios / DMI settings are not updated via the bios, they are updated via the AMI DMIEDIT tools. Aptio <= 5.6.5 worked with the dos version of the tools. my new box has 5.12 and doesn't work any more with dos.
                              tried the linux, but can't get paste EFI boot into grub loader. which means i need to load the shell.efi so i can run it is UEFI shell, but can't get that booting either

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • S
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by Mar 7, 2022, 7:56 PM

                                Right, so if your BIOS does not include a UEFI shell then you need to boot something that does, which isn't pfSense.
                                I would be looking for a USB image to do it.

                                What are you trying to change anyway? Is it passing a bad value to pfSense?

                                Steve

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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