NUC7PJYH what is feature Allow UEFI 3rd party driver to be loaded during Boot Device Selection (BDS) stage

[CCarb]

Inquiring as to what the NUC7PJYH "Visual BIOS" feature means:

Allow UEFI 3rd party driver to be loaded during Boot Device Selection (BDS) stage

and can you provide usage scenario.

some background:

• I have a couple of these running Debian Stretch / dual booting with other linux x86_64 OS...
• Using the box as a dev machine and testing bootable UEFI images (linux)
• I checked the Intel BIOS Glossary pdf; doesn't provide any more detail..

===============================================================

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 26 bytes

BIOS Information

Vendor: Intel Corp.

Version: JYGLKCPX.86A.0037.2018.0423.1539

Release Date: 04/23/2018

Address: 0xF0000

Runtime Size: 64 kB

ROM Size: 6656 kB

Characteristics:

PCI is supported

BIOS is upgradeable

BIOS shadowing is allowed

Boot from CD is supported

Selectable boot is supported

BIOS ROM is socketed

EDD is supported

5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)

3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)

3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)

Print screen service is supported (int 5h)

Serial services are supported (int 14h)

Printer services are supported (int 17h)

ACPI is supported

USB legacy is supported

BIOS boot specification is supported

Targeted content distribution is supported

UEFI is supported

BIOS Revision: 5.13

Firmware Revision: 2.23

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes

System Information

Manufacturer: Intel Corporation

Product Name: NUC7PJYH

Version: J67992-400

Serial Number: G6JY81300363

UUID: 19DDDD88-51EE-8EA5-9E1C-94C6911D3731

Wake-up Type: Power Switch

SKU Number:

Family: Intel NUC

[idata]

Hello cpcnetworking,

Thank you for joining the Intel Community Support.I understand that you would like to find additional information about vBIOS features. I would like to help you.I am doing further research to provide a detailed answer or description about it.Wanner G.

[CCarb]

...is this the right place to post questions like this....about features of the product?

[n_scott_pearson]

Yes, you can ask here. There is a NUC forum that you can post to, however.

This option allows the BIOS to load UEFI drivers for add-in hardware devices. For example, you could have a M.2 card that connects a drive with a non-standard hardware interface. The M.2 card would provide a UEFI driver, contained within an IC (called an Option Rom (OP-ROM for short)), that supported this non-standard interface.

Does that explain it well enough?

...S

[CCarb]

you mean for example the intel optane memory or M2 type drive....these would not show up as a drive? or they would need additional EFI firmware in addition to or in place of any bootloader EFI files.

I noticed that I could not boot with an efi file that was NOT named bootx64.efi; i thought maybe that was what the setting was for but it made no difference.

If that is the answer, OK but I don't have any M2 devices to test at the moment

[CCarb]

re: "..There is a NUC forum that you can post to, however..."

Can you provide the link for the above

I thought I posted under the right category here;

NUC7PJYH

========================================================================

For good measure where to report bugs?

Disregard below:

I think there is at least 1 very minor bug; where to report that or does this suffice ?

summary:

whether or not you choose USB ports to act as charging ports (on or off), they still act as charging ports. Even when the unit is turned off

again this is minor but contrary to what it looks like the feature setting should do

pls let me know about this as well

.

[n_scott_pearson]

No; the drivers for Optane and standard M.2 (NVMe) drives is built into the BIOS and no others are necessary.

No; we're talking UEFI drivers, not UEFI executables.

Bootx64.efi is the default name for booting. From the UEFI shell, you can load applications - and boot O/Ss - with different names.

I would be surprised if even 0.1% of NUC users ever see a nonstandard device that required a custom driver.

...S

[n_scott_pearson]

This is a link to the forum where you would normally ask questions related to the NUC products: /community/tech/nuc/content Intel® NUC.

When you first connect the power supply to the NUC and plug it into A/C power, the USB ports are going to be powered. This is the default hardware state. Only after you have pressed the power button and the BIOS has had a chance to complete POST will the NUC be configured to not provide power in S4/S5 (if that is indeed your wish).

...S

[CCarb]

I'm not familiar with the UEFI shell yet..

I tried to use efibootmgr to add an entry for a bootable USB (based on a pre-built iso x64 UEFI image) that I wanted to take a look at / try out. It was my intention of bypassing their bootloader setup

and boot from the kernel. This didn't work for this particular pre-built iso;

But in doing so, it overwrote my default SATA SSD boot entry.

I had to pull out the USB and let the NUC re-detect the boot entry after a power cycle

When I was first setting up my disk, it would not boot with syslinux.efi .. i had to rename it bootx64.efi to get the system to work

UEFI 3rd party driver is a good feature to have for development of custom drivers isn't it?

[CCarb]

Re "..USB ports are going to be powered..."

With the selection of S3,S4,S5 to NOT provide charging power and after several reboots, all three were still providing charging power. I dunno, i'll look at it again.

After reading a few posts, I saw that there is a more recent BIOS update to 0041 only the yellow-coded USB front end port still provides power; I want to keep it off as a safety feature.

*No need to delve into this any further, just wanted to remark for the benefit of common knowledge

[Ben15]

I still don't understand what is "Allow UEFI 3rd Party Driver Loaded" function.

Could have detail information to how to used this, thank you

[n_scott_pearson]

This is a security feature. If unchecked, it prevents 3rd-party UEFI Device Drivers - which could potentially contain nefarious software (trojans, etc.) - from being loaded. If checked, this will allow drivers to be loaded indiscriminately. This is not a good practice; don't check it.

Hope this helps,

...S