Re: Review D58990: freebsd-update: automatically update EFI and BIOS bootloaders on install

On 8/20/26 01:08, Ronald Pagani Jr (ronald.pagani.jr) wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 12:37 AM Stefan Esser <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>     Am 19.08.26 um 18:30 schrieb Ronald Pagani Jr (ronald.pagani.jr):
>     > I've submitted a patch to automatically update the EFI bootloader
>     on the ESP
>     > during freebsd-update install:
>     >
>     > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58990 <https://reviews.freebsd.org/
>     D58990> <https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58990 <https://
>     reviews.freebsd.org/D58990>>
>     >
>     > The problem: freebsd-update updates /boot/loader.efi on the root
>     filesystem,
>     > but the UEFI firmware boots from loader.efi on the EFI System
>     Partition — a
>     > separate FAT32 partition that freebsd-update never touches. After
>     a major
>     > version upgrade the ESP loader can be left several versions stale.
>     Since 14.1
>     > removed the lua_path==nil compatibility shim from core.lua, this
>     mismatch
>     > produces a hard boot failure. If the user also ran zpool upgrade,
>     the system is
>     > completely unbootable without external media.
>     >
>     > The patch hooks efi_bootloader_update.sh into install_run() in
>     freebsd-
>     > update.sh. It auto-detects the ESP via gpart, fingerprints /EFI/BOOT/
>     > BOOTx64.efi before touching it (multi-OS safe), creates /EFI/
>     FreeBSD/loader.efi
>     > if absent, updates NVRAM, and handles BIOS GPT bootcode as well.
>     Opt-out via
>     > UpdateBootloader=no in freebsd-update.conf.
>     >
>     > Tested on FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 amd64 (UEFI, ZFS, NVMe). 197 unit/
>     > integration/error tests available at:
>     >
>     > https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829 <https://
>     github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829> <https://github.com/
>     RZA- <https://github.com/RZA->
>     > SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829>
> 
>     I'm using a much simpler version that just covers my setup, and would
>     like to replace it by a more general version.
> 
>     This fails for me in lines 231 to 236 since device names are expected,
>     but zpool status returns a diskid based path:
> 
>     $ zpool status zroot
>        pool: zroot
>       state: ONLINE
>     config:
> 
>             NAME                          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
>             zroot                         ONLINE       0     0     0
>               diskid/DISK-8ESKF03YZ0EAp2  ONLINE       0     0     0
> 
>     errors: No known data errors
> 
>     $ sh efi_bootloader_update.sh --dry-run
>     freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: UEFI
>     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  No boot disks found
>     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  Boot disk discovery failed
>     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  If using hardware RAID or an exotic
>     topology, update the bootloader manually
> 
>     My version uses "gpart show -p" to list boot partitions and to fetch
>     the corresponding device names:
> 
>     $ gpart show -p | grep -w efi
>              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-8ESKF03YZ0EAp1  efi  (255M)
>              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-81S0A0K7FJDHp1  efi  (255M)
>              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-81S0A0L1FJDHp1  efi  (255M)
> 
>     > This is complementary to Warner Losh's D45890 (loader version-
>     check warnings).
>     > Feedback welcome.
>     Regards
>     STefan
> 
> 
> 
> I've just pushed a kern.disks implementation following recent review
> comments, and I'm wondering if that works for you?
> 
> https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829/blob/revision-2/
> src/efi_bootloader_update.sh <https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-
> for-bug279829/blob/revision-2/src/efi_bootloader_update.sh>
> 
> 
> Best,
> Ron
>  

On a Windows Dev Kit 2023 (with UFS) it gets: "freebsd-update:
[bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown"

# sh -x efi_bootloader_update.sh --dry-run --verbose
+ [ -n '' ]
+ _EFI_BOOTLOADER_UPDATE_SH=1
+ : /boot/loader.efi
+ : 0
+ : 0
+ : 1
+ : /boot/pmbr
+ : /boot/gptzfsboot
+ : /boot/gptboot
+ _EFI_FINGERPRINT_THRESHOLD=2
+ _efi_esp_mp=''
+ _efi_esp_did_mount=0
+ _efi_tmp_mounts=''
+ _efi_script_name=efi_bootloader_update.sh
+ [ efi_bootloader_update.sh '=' efi_bootloader_update.sh ]
+ [ 2 -gt 0 ]
+ EFI_DRY_RUN=1
+ shift
+ [ 1 -gt 0 ]
+ EFI_VERBOSE=1
+ shift
+ [ 0 -gt 0 ]
+ update_bootloaders
+ local 'total_errors=0'
+ local rc
+ efi_check_prerequisites
+ local 'ok=0'
+ id -u
+ [ 0 '!=' 0 ]
+ sysctl -n security.jail.jailed
+ [ 0 '=' 1 ]
+ [ ! -f /boot/loader.efi ]
+ [ ! -s /boot/loader.efi ]
+ return 0
+ rc=0
+ local boot_method 'fallback_binary='
+ efi_boot_method
+ local m
+ sysctl -n machdep.bootmethod
+ m=''
+ echo unknown
+ return
+ boot_method=unknown
+ _efi_info 'Boot method detected: unknown'
+ _efi_log 'INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown'
+ echo 'freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown'
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown
+ [ unknown '=' UEFI ]
+ trap efi_cleanup_mounts EXIT INT TERM
+ [ unknown '=' UEFI ]
+ local bios_list
+ efi_discover_all_bios_parts
+ local disks
+ sysctl -n kern.disks
+ tr ' ' '\n'
+ disks='da0
nda0'
+ local disk 'found=0'
+ [ -z da0 ]
+ local parts
+ gpart show da0
+ awk -v 'd=da0' '$4 == "freebsd-boot" { print d, $3 }'
+ parts=''
+ [ -n '' ]
+ [ -z nda0 ]
+ local parts
+ gpart show nda0
+ awk -v 'd=nda0' '$4 == "freebsd-boot" { print d, $3 }'
+ parts=''
+ [ -n '' ]
+ [ 0 -eq 0 ]
+ return 1
+ bios_list=''
+ true
+ [ -n '' ]
+ [ 0 -gt 0 ]
+ [ 1 '=' 1 ]
+ _efi_info '[DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete (no changes made)'
+ _efi_log 'INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete (no changes made)'
+ echo 'freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update
complete (no changes made)'
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete
(no changes made)
+ return 0
+ exit 0
+ efi_cleanup_mounts
+ local mp
+ _efi_tmp_mounts=''

(I had reported the empty sysctl -n machdep.bootmethod result for the
context in the review, violating an assumption of the scripting. I've no
clue how common the empty result might be overall.)

-- 
===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com