[PATCH v2 31/41] bootstd: Add an implementation of EFI boot

[Ilias Apalodimas]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 12:34:40PM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
> Hi Ilias,
> 
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 at 08:48, Ilias Apalodimas
> <ilias.apalodimas at linaro.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Simon,
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 08:09:04AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
> > > Hi Ilias,
> > >
> > > On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 at 02:36, Ilias Apalodimas
> > > <ilias.apalodimas at linaro.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi Simon,
> > > >
> > > > On Sun, 24 Oct 2021 at 02:27, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Add a bootmeth driver which handles EFI boot, using EFI_LOADER.
> > > > >
> > > > > In effect, this provides the same functionality as the 'bootefi' command
> > > > > and shares the same code. But the interface into it is via a bootmeth,
> > > > > so it does not require any special scripts, etc.
> > > > >
> > > > > For now this requires the 'bootefi' command be enabled. Future work may
> > > > > tidy this up so that it can be used without CONFIG_CMDLINE being enabled.
> > > >
> > > > I'll leave this up to Heinrich, but personally I wouldn't include this
> > > > patch at all. EFI has it's bootmgr which can handle booting just fine.
> > > > I don't see why we should duplicate the functionality.  The new boot
> > > > method can just have an entry called 'EFI' and then let the existing
> > > > EFI code to decide.
> > >
> > > This is needed so that EFI boot is actually invoked. If bootmgr starts
> > > being used then it can still be invoked from standard boot. The point
> > > is that there is a standard way of booting that supports EFI and other
> > > things.
> >
> > This patch tries to reason about the default naming EFI imposes on it's
> > boot files. distro_efi_read_bootflow() will try to find files following the
> > EFI naming convention (e.g bootaarch64.efi, bootarm.efi etc).  If those are
> > found it will try to boot them right?  That's not the right thing to do though.
> > On the EFI spec these files are tried if no Boot#### variables are found.
> > So we can get rid of this entirely,  add a dummy entry on the bootflow that
> > says 'boot the efi manager' (which is what the next patch does).
> >
> > The efibootmgr then will check Boot#### variables and if none are found,
> > it's going to fallback into loading bootaarch64.efi, bootarm.efi etc
> > essentially offering identical functionality.
> 
> Yes that's fine, and when EFI's boot manager is in use I have a driver
> for that too, as you can see in the other patch. We may need to adjust
> the order, by the sound of it, if it needs to run before EFI things.
> But that is easy enough.
> 

That's the point though.  I don't want to have 2 different ways of booting EFI
as I don't see any benefit.  Do you?

Regards
/Ilias

> But we do need to provide the existing functionality for now, as I
> understand it.
> 
> > > This series is about replacing the scripts we currently have with a
> > > proper C implementation that uses driver model.
> > >
> 
> Regards,
> Simon