[systemd-devel] gummiboot can't be installed on ESP which is soft RAID1 metadata=0.9 partition

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 14.04.2014 18:16, schrieb Lennart Poettering:
> On Mon, 14.04.14 18:01, Francis Moreau (francis.moro at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> "gummiboot install" fails when ESP is MD RAID1 device using metadata 0.9
>> or 1.0.
>>
>> I don't think using such RAID for ESP would lead to issue.
>>
>> Is there any reason gummiboot doesn't want to be installed on such
>> partition ?
> 
> The installer will make sure that the ESP is on GPT and carries the right
> type UUID. We do that for safety reasons, since that's the requirement
> made by UEFI, and how the bootloader is found.
> 
> You cannot place the ESP on sw RAID, since the firmware might want to
> write to the ESP (most won't do that, but could, and the tianocore
> implemenation you use in qemu certainly does). 

While this is unsafe, the firmware doesn't write to the ESP during
normal operation (i.e. bootup and efivar configuration).

Tianocore does not write to the ESP either, if used properly. Newer
versions will allow to store efivars in the image itself instead of the ESP.

Manual installation of gummiboot onto the ESP using efibootmgr does in
fact yield the desired results - until you use the EFI shell to modify
files on the ESP, then you'll obviously corrupt it.


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