Re: Bugs and tasks for 2.02[~rc1]

[Matt Fleming <matt@codeblueprint.co.uk>]

On Mon, 07 Mar, at 04:20:00PM, Peter Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 07, 2016 at 11:57:33PM +0300, Andrei Borzenkov wrote:
> > 
> > > How big part of it is related to secure boot? Just
> > > changing Linux boot protocol doesn't need FSF involvement. Accepting secure
> > 
> > Patches currently use EFI stub to launch kernel but I think this is done
> > simply to make code easier. We can continue to use the same load
> > protocol as before, just add image verification.
> 
> No, they're doing it because that is the supported entry point for EFI
> in Linux.  We do not want EFI machines using other entry points.  It
> worked out terribly when we used to do this, and we don't want to start
> again.  I've Cc'd Matt Fleming, the upstream kernel EFI maintainer,
> because I'm sure he's going to agree with me.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Having multiple entry points works out badly for everyone, since they
tend to bit rot, and few people test all of them equally. While we
continue to support legacy boot entry points upstream, we're not
actively adding support for new features to them for EFI.

For boot loaders, the EFI handover protocol is definitely the
preferred method of booting Linux on EFI.