Re: Revisiting EFI boot stub config file support

[Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>]

On Jan 1, 2013, at 12:24, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:

> On 01/01/2013 07:55 AM, Shea Levy wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> In March last year, I submitted a patch to enable the EFI boot stub to
>> read its config arguments from a file on the ESP, both to help with
>> booting from livecds and to avoid having to use efibootmgr every time
>> you change your boottime arguments. I ended up dropping the submission
>> because I ended up coming to the conclusion that tools like rEFInd and
>> gummiboot were better suited to the task of boot managing than the
>> kernel itself.
>> 
>> Since then, however, I've received enough emails asking about the status
>> of the patch that I think there is room for a simpler entrant into the
>> field of linux EFI boot management. This could be in-kernel, as per my
>> original patch, or a very simple out-of-kernel (but maybe distributed
>> in-tree?) efi image that simply reads linux.conf and boots linux with
>> those parameters. My personal bias is still toward handling this
>> functionality outside of the kernel itself, but before I started the
>> work I thought I'd ask here if anyone thought I should instead bring my
>> old patch up-to-date.
> 
> I am willing to accept this (but I am not the first-line maintainer,
> Matt is) in the kernel EFI stub as long as there are no hard-coded
> filenames involved, no automatic behavior, and no "scanning".  Those are
> showstoppers, as is adding to the boot time for nonusers.

Hm, ok. Does the boot stub have access to CONFIG_CMDLINE? Or could another compile-time setting be added so that distros can ship livecds that automatically use a config file found at a hard-coded location?

> 
>    -hpa
> 
>