EFI Stub - booting without a bootloader

In this post I'm detailing a quick and easy method to use EFI Stub boot introduced in the Linux kernel version 3.3.0 that provides for a faster boot without the use of a bootloader (such as grub) on a UEFI capable system.

no bootable device - gpt

Some legacy BIOS's may have an issue with a GPT partitioned drive.


Ran across this recently with an Intel D975XBX board. I GPT partitioned a drive with gdisk, installed Ubuntu and when I rebooted after the install completed with surprised to see "No Bootable Device..." displayed.

Add bootable DOS support to your USB stick

Building on the previous post where we added SystemRescueCD capabilities to our USB stick (please see that post for details and conventions that pertain to this one as well) while still being able to use it for transferring files between various OS, we will now add bootable DOS support so that we can use it for BIOS updates as well as other DOS based tools such as Intel's SSD firmware updater.

Add SystemRescueCD capability to your USB stick

For Linux users: Creating a bootable SystemRescueCD USB stick. The SystemRescueCD is an invaluable resource and should be in every techs toolkit. Kudos and much thanks to the developers!