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

Mark Millard <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers
Message-ID <[email protected]> 
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 an amd64 system it appears it would mount and update every ESP, not
just the booted one. Even the Windows 11 Pro one:

# gpart show -p nda0
=>        34  3907029101    nda0  GPT  (1.8T)
          34        2014          - free -  (1007K)
        2048      204800  nda0p1  efi  (100M)
      206848       32768  nda0p2  ms-reserved  (16M)
      239616  3904946176  nda0p3  ms-basic-data  (1.8T)
  3905185792     1843200  nda0p4  ms-recovery  (900M)
  3907028992         143          - free -  (72K)

is listed by the --dry-run use.

This is not appropriate for this system. It has various boot media for
booting various OS's, mostly various  FreeBSD versions, some zfs, some
ufs, some rather old. (I select which media/ESP at to boot in the UEFI UI.)

# sh efi_bootloader_update.sh --dry-run 2>&1 | grep -e Would -e Adding
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/da1p1 at
/tmp/tmp.upwzASjlJK
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.upwzASjlJK/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.upwzASjlJK/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/da0p2 at
/tmp/tmp.LwKBxYDbgh
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.LwKBxYDbgh/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.LwKBxYDbgh/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/nda4p1 at
/tmp/tmp.yJYQH8a2Cz
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.yJYQH8a2Cz/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.yJYQH8a2Cz/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/nda2p1 at
/tmp/tmp.9MqfM1GtZ9
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.9MqfM1GtZ9/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.9MqfM1GtZ9/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/nda1p1 at
/tmp/tmp.xtfvCG9SJQ
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.xtfvCG9SJQ/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.xtfvCG9SJQ/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would mount /dev/nda0p1 at
/tmp/tmp.oCz0FRiFcZ
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.oCz0FRiFcZ/EFI/FreeBSD/loader.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Would update:
/tmp/tmp.oCz0FRiFcZ/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Adding NVRAM boot entry: FreeBSD →
\EFI\FreeBSD\loader.efi

It did skip media with no ESP:

=>        34  4000797293    nda3  GPT  (1.9T)
          34      262144  nda3p1  ms-reserved  (128M)
      262178        2014          - free -  (1007K)
      264192  3600451584  nda3p2  ms-basic-data  (1.7T)
  3600715776    62914560  nda3p3  freebsd-swap  (30G)
  3663630336   337166991          - free -  (161G)


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