Re: Booting via systemd-boot

Michael <[email protected]> Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:11:19 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.gentoo.user
Message-ID	<2004009.taCxCBeP46@rogueboard>
On Sunday, 5 April 2026 05:09:44 British Summer Time Peter Humphrey 
wrote:
> On Saturday, 4 April 2026 15:52:09 British Summer Time I wrote:
> > On Saturday, 4 April 2026 14:37:24 British Summer Time Michael 
wrote:
> > > I have steered away from systemd-boot altogether and for my UEFI
> > > systems from GRUB too, using the rather basic but elegant in its
> > > simplicity EFI stub instead.
> > 
> > I think I'll try that. I've been deterred so far by its not working
> > on all systems, as my experience confirms.
> 
> ...and indeed it doesn't work on this machine. On the other hand, I'm
> most likely doing something wrong, as the handbook is no help at all:
> it just says to emerge installkernel. That's it. No package.use or
> anything else.

Enable the following in your kernel:

Processor type and features  --->
    [*] EFI runtime service support
    [*]     EFI stub support

Enable the block layer  --->
    Partition Types  --->
    [*]   EFI GUID Partition support

File systems  --->
 -> Pseudo filesystems                                                                                  
    <*> EFI Variable filesystem

You may also need some/all of:

Device Drivers  --->
  Firmware Drivers
   -> EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Support 
      -> EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Support

     <*> Register efivars backend for pstore

     [*] Adjust memory attributes in EFISTUB

     <*> EFI Bootloader Control (optional)

     [*] Reset memory attack mitigation

Then you have two choices.  As per the wiki page[1] or manual.

Starting with the wiki, you can:

1. Mount your EFI System Partition (formatted with FAT32 and set as EFI 
in your GPT) under /efi.

2. Set USE="efistub" and emerge 'sys-kernel/installkernel'.

3. Run 'make install'[2] after the kernel is built.

4. Check your kernel has been installed in /efi/Gentoo/

For a manual approach you must install sys-boot/efibootmgr, copy the 
bzImage, System.map and .config in /efi/GEntoo/, then follow the 
incantations suggested in the wiki page.[3]  This method has more steps 
than just running 'make install', but gives you more freedom in 
labelling your kernels as you like.

If you get any errors please post back with specifics.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_stub
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Installkernel
[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Efibootmgr
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