[U-Boot] [PATCH 00/14] EFI payload / application support v2

Sun Jan 31 16:17:11 CET 2016

Hi Alexander,

On 14 January 2016 at 22:06, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
> This is my Christmas present for my openSUSE friends :).
>
> U-Boot is a great project for embedded devices. However, convincing
> everyone involved that only for "a few oddball ARM devices" we need to
> support different configuration formats from grub2 when all other platforms
> (PPC, System Z, x86) are standardized on a single format is a nightmare.

Well some might argue that grub2 and UEFI are their own nightmares :-)

>
> So we started to explore alternatives. At first, people tried to get
> grub2 running using the u-boot api interface. However, FWIW that one
> doesn't support relocations, so you need to know where to link grub2 to
> at compile time. It also seems to be broken more often than not. And on
> top of it all, it's a one-off interface, so yet another thing to maintain.

The API interface is mostly for closed-source work I think.

>
> That led to a nifty idea. What if we can just implement the EFI application
> protocol on top of U-Boot? Then we could compile a single grub2 binary for
> uEFI based systems and U-Boot based systems and as soon as that one's loaded,
> everything looks and feels (almost) the same.
>
> This patch set is the result of pursuing this endeavor.
>
>   - I am successfully able to run grub2 and Linux EFI binaries with this code.
>   - When enabled, the resulting U-Boot binary only grows by ~10kb,
>     so it's very light weight.
>   - It works on 32bit ARM and AArch64.
>   - All storage devices are directly accessible
>   - No EFI variables
>   - Removable media booting (search for /efi/boot/boota{a64,arm}.efi)
>
> Of course, there are still a few things one could do on top:
>
>   - Improve disk media detection (don't scan, use what information we have)
>   - Add EFI variable support using NVRAM
>   - Add GFX support
>   - Make EFI Shell work ;)
>   - Network device support
>   - Support for payload exit
>
> But so far, I'm very happy with the state of the patches. They completely
> eliminate potential arguments against U-Boot internally and give users the
> chance to run with the same level of comfort on all firmware types.

I'd suggest creating a README with the above info. The cover letter
will vanish pretty fast. Perhaps also update README.efi with this new
option.

Another thing you could list is efi_set_watchdog_timer().

>
> Version 2 was successfully tested to boot grub2 and Linux from there on a
> HiKey (AArch64, dcache disabled) and on a BeagleBone Black.

Do you have a UEFI image for BBB that I can put on an SD card or otherwise boot?

For now I've had a play with Minnowboard, which is x86. The main thing
I noticed is that the API function implements should have EFIAPI on
them also. I'll make a few other comments on the patches. But overall
it seems to function and I think your implementation is nice.

I was able to get grub to boot but it just says  'Welcome to GRUB!'
and then 'error: disk ',gpt4' not found'. I'm not sure what that
means.

U-Boot 2016.01-00860-geb4b602-dirty (Jan 31 2016 - 08:02:54 -0700)

CPU: x86_64, vendor Intel, device 30673h
DRAM:  2 GiB
efi_runtime_relocate: Relocating to offset=7ba5d000
MMC:   ValleyView SDHCI: 0, ValleyView SDHCI: 1
SF: Detected W25Q64DW with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 8 MiB
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

Video: 1280x1024x16
Model: Intel Minnowboard Max
SF: Detected W25Q64DW with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 8 MiB
SCSI:  SATA link 0 timeout.
Target spinup took 0 ms.
AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 2 ports 3 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode
flags: 64bit ncq stag pm led clo pio slum part sxs
scanning bus for devices...
  Device 0: (1:0) Vendor: ATA Prod.: ADATA SP310 Rev: 5.2
            Type: Hard Disk
            Capacity: 30533.8 MB = 29.8 GB (62533296 x 512)
Found 1 device(s).
Net:
Warning: eth_rtl8169 using MAC address from ROM
eth0: eth_rtl8169
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
reading grubia32.efi
85504 bytes read in 16 ms (5.1 MiB/s)
## Starting EFI application at 0x00010000 ...
WARNING: No device tree loaded, expect boot to fail
Scanning disks on scsi...
Scanning disks on usb...
Scanning disks on mmc...
Card did not respond to voltage select!
MMC Device 2 not found
MMC Device 3 not found
Found 2 disks
do_bootefi_exec:134 Jumping to 0x72857400
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7bab8c18, 728609a0, 7b857ab8, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler loaded_image0
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_locate_protocol(72860990, 00000000, 7b857ac8)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_cin_get_mode(7baa79cc, 7b857af8, 00000000, 00000000)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_locate_protocol(72860990, 00000000, 7b857aa8)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_cin_get_mode(7baa79cc, 7b857ad8, 00000000, 00000000)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_cout_enable_cursor(7baa79d8, 1)
EFI: Exit 80000003
EFI: Entry efi_allocate_pages(1, 2, 0x6, 7b857a74)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_get_memory_map(7b857b04, 7286c000, 7b857a64, 7b857b08, 7b857a68)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_allocate_pages(2, 2, 0x1ca15, 7b857a74)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_free_pages(7286c000, 0x6)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_set_watchdog_timer(0, 0x0, 0, 00000000)
EFI: App called into unimplemented function efi_set_watchdog_timer
EFI: Exit 80000003
EFI: Exit 80000003
EFI: App called into unimplemented function efi_set_watchdog_timer
EFI: Exit 80000003
EFI: Entry efi_locate_handle(2, 72860980, 00000000, 7b857a88, 72856fe0)
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7b863108, 728609b0, 7b857a78, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler open_dp
efi_disk_open_dp
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7b863108, 72860980, 7b857a98, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler open_block
efi_disk_open_block
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7b8631d8, 728609b0, 7b857a78, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler open_dp
efi_disk_open_dp
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7b8631d8, 72860980, 7b857a98, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler open_block
efi_disk_open_block
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_cout_set_attribute(7baa79d8, 70)
EFI: Exit 80000003
Welcome to GRUB!

EFI: Entry efi_cout_set_attribute(7baa79d8, 7)
EFI: Exit 80000003
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7bab8c18, 728609a0, 7b857ad8, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler loaded_image0
EFI: Exit 0
EFI: Entry efi_open_protocol(7bab8bd0, 728609b0, 7b857a78, 7bab8c18,
00000000, 0x2)
efi_open_protocol: Found protocol handler bootefi0
EFI: Exit 0
error: disk `,gpt4' not found.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

I suppose my grub could be wrong. If you can point me to one that I
should use I could try again. I pushed your tree (rebased to mainline)
plus my messing-around patch to u-boot-x86/efi-working.

It would be good to get this series applied soon.

>
> If you read this far and want to try out the patches, feel free to grab
> the source from git at:
>
>   https://github.com/agraf/u-boot efi-v2
>
> or just use the readily compiled version from
>
>   https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:algraf:branches:Base:System
>
Regards,
Simon