Creating a multiboot for both UEFI and legacy

[spleenharvester]

Basically, I'm trying to create a multiboot stick. Most, but not all distros on the stick support UEFI, so I want to be able to create a stick compatible with both types - such that I can remove the non-UEFI compatible distros from that menu.

Does anyone know how I would go about doing this? Seems YUMI, RUFUS and E2B don't support this.

Thanks

EDIT: I have an idea. Legacy via syslinux (YUMI), then set drive as active, install Grub2 MBR for UEFI?

EDIT2: Can't find any program to edit the Grub2 menu from Windows and I have no idea/can't find any information on how to do it manually. Any pointers?

 

[memyselfandi]

I don't know but I can comment having reauthored RHEL and OEL install DVDs and with extra GRUB boot menu entries which supported both UEFI and legacy.

For the legacy menu we had to edit the isolinux.cfg file to add the menu entries but for UEFI there was a completely separate GRUB menu file to edit under the UEFI sub-directory on the disk. On top of this we had to change the command used to author the DVD so that it was bootable under UEFI as well as legacy booting.

So from your point of view you will probably have two completely seperate menus to edit and on top of that you will probably have to change whatever you are using to make the media bootable so that it supports both.

 

[spleenharvester]

Thanks, I got there in the end - here is how I did it for anyone else looking to make them also:

1) Format drive to fat32, set as "Active" in diskpart

2) Set up the legacy side of things: This is done very easily using "WinSetupFromUSB", which copies over PLoP boot manager and associated grub4dos files you will need.

3) Install grub2 using grub2win on the stick. Create a directory \EFI\boot on the drive, and transfer all of the \grub2\ files into it (or your BIOS may not see the stick as EFI bootable).

4) Copy the EFI file from \efi\boot\g2bootmgr\grub2win.boot64.efi to \efi\boot and rename to grubx64.efi.

5) If bootx64.efi is not present, add it to \efi\boot\. I had to obtain this file from a program called UEFI_MULTI.

6) Last but not least, use bootice to install a Grub4Dos MBR to the drive (necessary for legacy mode to work).

Then just edit your grub.cfg and menu.lst to suit, and you should have a multiboot drive that uses grub4dos/grub2 to boot the same ISO files in legacy or EFI modes (different menus means you can remove the entries that do not support EFI).