Message-ID: <910f650e-326e-5773-686a-03cd2474c482@jirutka.cz>
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2023 12:46:24 +0200
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Subject: Re: Cannot boot 3.18 with UEFI?
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To: RSS <rss@armor-mail.com>, ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
References: <20230630174332.4b38d6d5@nixosX240>
 <6b9ae3e080c1c10450061f715291a76670343e13.camel@riseup.net>
 <20230703181206.720d6ad6@armor-mail.com>
From: Jakub Jirutka <jakub@jirutka.cz>
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Hi Ralf,

I know I’m a bit later with this response, but you don’t have to use 
Grub for UEFI. Actually, you don’t need any extra bootloader on UEFI.

Linux kernel supports EFISTUB booting which allows EFI firmware to load 
the kernel as an EFI executable. The best way is to build EFI Unified 
Kernel Image – a single EFI PE executable combining an EFI stub loader, 
a kernel image (vmlinuz), the kernel command line, and optionally an 
initramfs image, CPU microcode update, and a splash image. This can be 
easily signed for Secure Boot. It’s described on 
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/UEFI_Secure_Boot.

Jakub

On 03/07/23 12:12, RSS wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:30:34 +0200
> Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> wrote:
> 
>> on my new PC I'm forced to use UEFI, since the new Intel GPU doesn't
>> allow to select CSM, for this reason I migrated from syslinux to grub.
>> I used syslinux from my Arch Linux install and now I'm using grub from
>> the Arch Linux install. The pitfalls I experienced booting Alpine were
>> not related to the grub bootloader.
>>
>> It's not that terrible as it does sound. Without all those grub
>> configs for the configs and automation, it's possible to write a
>> clean syslinux alike config for grub [1].
> 
> Thanks for the reply, this inspired me to push on, and I do have
> progress. I am really stuck on getting to an actual UEFI (eventually
> default) boot menu item here, as otherwise my kids will never be able
> to safely boot this machine. (What happens when a six-year old plays
> with UEFI?: mayhem of the destructive kind. Seen it with my own eyes.
> ;-)
> 
> So I am currently getting Alpine started with rEFInd, which I believe
> will not achieve the above default boot objective. Here are my notes,
> for posterity and perhaps further comment:
> 
> --------------------
> 
> Do a surgical single-partition install of Alpine on an already busy
> multi-booting machine, and get it booting via UEFI.
> 
> The key bit turned out to be in ref 3:
> 
> 	`If you're going to use EFI, make sure you mount esp partition
> 	on /boot/efi and set BOOTLOADER=grub and USE_EFI=1, and that
> 	grub-efi and efibootmgr are installed before running
> 	setup-disk.`
> 
> Where (unspoken!!) `BOOTLOADER=grub and USE_EFI=1` are actually
> environment variables which must be set prior to running setup-disk.
> There were then promising "EFI" messages as setup-disk did it's stuff,
> AND a couple of dodgy looking error messages about not being able to
> write files to odd looking locations in the EFI partition.
> 
> This STILL somehow did not result in a working UEFI boot entry, but
> rEFInd (already installed during earlier struggles) picked it up and is
> how I currently boot Alpine.
> 
> Ref 5 says this:
> 
> 	`Note: The loader and initrd file arguments are relative to the
> 	EFI partition. In a default installation, alpine places these
> 	files in /boot/, while EFI is mounted to /boot/efi/. You can
> 	either update fstab to mount EFI at /boot/, or manually copy
> 	them to /boot/efi/.`
> 
> But, I have tried copying initramfs-lts & vmlinuz-lts into /boot/efi/
> to no effect, still no working UEFI boot menu item for Alpine. Mounting
> the EFI partition on /boot/ makes me nervous, what bad things then
> happen to grub?
> 
> Refs:
> 
> 1.
> https://docs.alpinelinux.org/user-handbook/0.1a/Installing/manual.html
> 2. https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 3.
> https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_disks_manually 4.
> https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Dualbooting 5.
> https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Bootloaders