Re: EFI support

Hi Lars;

Am Mittwoch, 15. Mai 2024, 13:32:52 CEST schrieb Lars Karlslund:
> Hello,
> 
> While BIOS/CSM is still supported on a lot of hardware, some vendors are
> starting to ship UEFI only enabled firmware, which is problematic due to
> some missing support not being baked into the linux kernels that ships with
> LEAF.
> 
> I've been experimenting a bit with this, and have come up with a solution
> that allows my USB-keys to support both BIOS and UEFI at the same time, by
> creating an EFI-partition for GRUB2/EFI and also installing GRUB2/BIOS on
> the primary FAT partition that contains all the regular files from LEAF.
> 
> The only thing that is missing is support for EFI framebuffer. This is
> required if you want to have a physical monitor with text output - which I
> really like both for diagnostics or in error conditions. As it is now the
> existing kernel boots, but you get no output on the screen after the
> bootloader.
> 
> With a custom compiled kernel everything works fine, so I was wondering if
> I could persuade maintainers to add the missing .config entries to the
> stock shipped kernels? They don't take up much space and should not
> interfere with systems that are running under BIOS mode.

I've added you're config entries for x86_64 (for now).

Indeed it works with a system running in BIOS mode; about size YMMV the kernel 
is about 300kb bigger and modules.sqfs as well. But on a x86_64 system such 
size changes  shouldn't be an real issue.

I've building an rc2 for further testing and intend to add EFI support for the 
i686 kernel later.



 
> These are the entries that I used:
> 
> CONFIG_ACPI_BGRT=y
> CONFIG_ACPI_PRMT=y
> CONFIG_APERTURE_HELPERS=y
> CONFIG_BOOT_VESA_SUPPORT=y
> CONFIG_DRM_PANEL_ORIENTATION_QUIRKS=y
> CONFIG_EFI_CUSTOM_SSDT_OVERLAYS=y
> CONFIG_EFI_DXE_MEM_ATTRIBUTES=y
> CONFIG_EFI_EARLYCON=y
> CONFIG_EFI_ESRT=y
> CONFIG_EFI_GENERIC_STUB_INITRD_CMDLINE_LOADER=y
> CONFIG_EFI_MIXED=y
> CONFIG_EFI_RUNTIME_WRAPPERS=y
> CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y
> CONFIG_EFIVAR_FS=m
> CONFIG_EFI_VARS_PSTORE=y
> CONFIG_EFI=y
> CONFIG_FB_CFB_COPYAREA=y
> CONFIG_FB_CFB_FILLRECT=y
> CONFIG_FB_CFB_IMAGEBLIT=y
> CONFIG_FB_CMDLINE=y
> CONFIG_FB_DEFERRED_IO=y
> CONFIG_FB_EFI=y
> CONFIG_FB_NOTIFY=y
> CONFIG_FB_SYS_COPYAREA=y
> CONFIG_FB_SYS_FILLRECT=y
> CONFIG_FB_SYS_FOPS=y
> CONFIG_FB_SYS_IMAGEBLIT=y
> CONFIG_FB=y
> CONFIG_FIRMWARE_EDID=y
> CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y
> CONFIG_FONT_8x8=y
> CONFIG_FONT_SUPPORT=y
> CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER=y
> CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
> CONFIG_INIT_STACK_NONE=y
> CONFIG_SYSFB=y
> CONFIG_XEN_EFI=y
> CONFIG_XEN_FBDEV_FRONTEND=y
> 
> If there is interest, I can also share the script that I've made that
> prepares new USB-keys for this - it partitions, formats, decompresses LEAF,
> installs bootloader etc.

Of course, if you can provide (commented) scripts it may help others as well.

> FYI my use of LEAF is for a customer that has been using it for more than
> 10 years, and have 40-50 office firewalls deployed. All configuration is
> maintained in a central database, and complete firewalls are deployed
> pre-configured with everything needed as tgz files for either new USB-keys
> or online updates to existing systems.

Nice to hear!

kp

> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Lars
> 
> 
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