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Date:      Tue, 6 Sep 2016 16:16:57 +0000
From:      fpqc ?? <harry.gindi@live.com>
To:        "freebsd-current@freebsd.org" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   The state of UEFI support in the Kernel and installer
Message-ID:  <SN1PR10MB08452638665D7EB6A064D57090F90@SN1PR10MB0845.namprd10.prod.outlook.com>

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I was reading this article from the 2013 Dev summit on UEFI:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/201305DevSummit/UEFI

In particular, I wanted to ask what is the status on these two goals (from =
the article):

The following issues exist:
- The installer needs to be taught about creating EFI System Partitions (if=
 needed) or selecting an EFI System Partition to install our first- and sec=
ond-stage boot code.
- The installer needs to be taught about creating EFI boot entries for our =
boot code once the kernel has an API for this.

Right now, as of the latest -Current image, the installer does not ask if a=
n EFI System partition already exists, which is rather scary.  When doing a=
 manual (expert) partitioning scheme, the installer should ask for the loca=
tion of the ESP if it exists, and if no ESP is specified for mounting, the =
installer should warn that no bootloader will be installed. =20

The other problem is that as far as I can tell, there is no code that creat=
es the EFI boot entry in any case.  By default, the installer just moves ei=
ther boot1.efi or loader.efi (not sure) to:
(ESP)/EFI/bootx64.efi,
which is the default location for EFI firmware.  I was wondering if the ker=
nel has the requisite API/driver for adding EFI boot entries yet.  On (Arch=
) Linux, you can add an entry to the NVRAM with a tool called bootctl, whic=
h is part of the sd-boot package. =20

Also, wondering if FreeBSD has any plan to add something like initramfs/EFI=
Stub booting, which allows for much easier bootloader configuration with sd=
-boot than the current FreeBSD EFI bootloader, which must be chainloaded an=
d has its configuration stored off of the ESP. =20




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