Add Support for UEFI Boot Option

Help and Support
#1

Today, when I tried to install the Volumio on my Intel NUC8i7HVK PC, I was unable to boot from the SD card created from the latest x86 version of Volumio. As referred by https://downloadmirror.intel.com/29832/eng/HN_0063_ReleaseNotes.pdf, Intel stopped supporting the legacy boot option on the HVK/HNK series of its NUC computers more than two years ago.

In the BIOS settings of my NUC, there is no options for legacy boot and I can see the Volumio SD card is listed together with the hard drive in the list of UEFI boot devices. However, the Volumio SD card failed to boot the computer.

So I’m wondering if Volumio suuport the UEFI boot method, and, if not, when it will.

Thanks for your help!

#2

Yes, UEFI boot was introduced already at the beginning of PC support for Volumio2.
I have not tested a NUC 8th gen, but it is possible that you need to test our development version, which has a much newer kernel and supports a lot of new hardware combinations.
Look in Volumio Development/ Development talks. You will find a thread about X86 and buster with a download link.
Please let us know whether it helped.

#3

Today, I grabbed the latest development x86 version of Volumio and gave it a try. The good news is that it can boot my Intel NUC8i7HVK all the way to the command console, and the bad news is that then the boot process stopped there without loading up the graphics system. However the system is in a weird resolution that does not match the native monitor resolution of 3840x2160 such that all texts are squeezed a lot in the horizontal direction.

At the console interface, the lsmod command shows that the video drive i915 is loaded, which is correct since NUC8i7HVK comes with an Intel HD Graphics 630 chip embedded in its Core i7-8809G CPU. However, this process also integrates a more powerful AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics chip which is connected to the 4K monitor. Obviously no video drivers related to this chip was loaded, which is why I think the attempt to start the GUI desktop failed. In a regular desktop environment, the Radeon RX Vega M GH is powered by the open-source amdgpu driver and it works pretty well.

Therefore, I think Volumio x86 needs to be able to auto detect which video card/chip is actually in use and then load the correct video driver accordingly, since it’s very common for a system with multiple video cards/chips in the x86 world.

Thanks!