Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)


EFI is an interface between operating systems and platform firmware. EFI is implemented on HP Itanimum-based systems. There are many components to EFI that can be found on the Intel Web site. At the time of this writing the following is the home URL for EFI: http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/index.htm.

Figure 1-11 shows where EFI fits in between platform firmware and the operating system loader:

Figure 1-11. EFI on HP Itanium-Based Systems

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We've covered the HP firmware extensively in this chapter as well as the HP-UX operating system loader. EFI is an additional component that is independent of the operating system and provides a shell for interfacing to multiple operating systems.

Working with EFI is straightforward in that it is menu-driven so you make the desired selections and traverse the menu hierarchy. Figure 1-12 shows the main EFI screen from which you can make various boot- related selections:

Figure 1-12. EFI Boot Administration Main Screen

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From the menu shown in Figure 1-12, you can perform a variety of boot-related tasks , such as Change Boot Order of the operating systems you can boot. Figure 1-13 shows the EFI boot manager:

Figure 1-13. EFI Main Screen

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In Figure 1-13 you can see that there are three operating systems from which you can boot on this Itanium-based system. There is an HP-UX, a Red Hat Linux , and a Windows operating system. You can boot any one of these.

Through EFI you can control the boot-related setup on your Itanium-based system. With multiple options for operating systems you can run on Itanium-based systems, you'll use this interface often to coordinate this operating systems.



HP-UX 11i Systems Administration Handbook and Toolkit
HP-UX 11i Systems Administration Handbook and Toolkit (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0131018833
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 301

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