Re: UEFI EBS() failures on Lenovo T14s

Johan Hovold
2024-11-28T14:46:19Z

On Thu, Nov 28, 2024 at 12:05:09PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:

> If you're happy to experiment more, you could try and register a
> notification for EFI_EVENT_GROUP_BEFORE_EXIT_BOOT_SERVICES using
> CreateEventEx(), and see if it gets called when ExitBootServices() is
> called. That would at least help narrow it down.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I see the notify function being called when I signal it as well as on
each ExitBootServices().

With an efi_printk() in the callback ExitBootServices() fails as
expected, but with an empty function the kernel seems to start every
time.

Interestingly, ExitBootServices() now succeeds also if I add back the
CloseEvent() call. In fact, it works also if I never signal the event
(i.e. if I just create and close the event).

The patch below should suffice as a workaround I can carry until the
firmware has been fixed.

Johan

From 1464360c7c16d1a6ce454bf88ee5815663f27283 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Johan Hovold <johan+linaro@kernel.org>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2024 16:05:37 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] hack: efi/libstub: fix t14s exit_boot_services() failure

The UEFI firmware on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s is broken and
ExitBootServices() often fails and prevents the kernel from starting:

EFI stub: Exiting boot services...
EFI stub: Exit boot services failed.

One bootloader entry may fail to start almost consistently (once in a
while it may start), while a second entry may always work even when the
kernel, dtb and initramfs images are copies of the failing entry on the
same ESP.

This can be worked around by starting and exiting a UEFI shell from the
bootloader or by starting the bootloader manually via the Boot Menu
(F12) before starting the kernel.

Notably starting the kernel automatically from the shell startup.nsh
does not work, while calling the same script manually works.

Experiments have revealed that allocating an event before calling
ExitBootServices() can make the call succeed. When providing a
notification function there apparently is no need to actually signal the
event group and CloseEvent() could also be called directly.

Signed-off-by: Johan Hovold <johan+linaro@kernel.org>
---
.../firmware/efi/libstub/efi-stub-helper.c | 24 +++++++++++++++++++
drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efistub.h | 4 ++--
2 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efi-stub-helper.c b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efi-stub-helper.c
index de659f6a815f..9c9c7a1f1718 100644
--- a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efi-stub-helper.c
+++ b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efi-stub-helper.c
@@ -409,6 +409,13 @@ char *efi_convert_cmdline(efi_loaded_image_t *image, int *cmd_line_len)
return (char *)cmdline_addr;
}

+#define EFI_EVENT_GROUP_BEFORE_EXIT_BOOT_SERVICES \
+ EFI_GUID(0x8be0e274, 0x3970, 0x4b44, 0x80, 0xc5, 0x1a, 0xb9, 0x50, 0x2f, 0x3b, 0xfc)
+
+static void efi_before_ebs_notify(efi_event_t event, void *context)
+{
+}
+
/**
* efi_exit_boot_services() - Exit boot services
* @handle: handle of the exiting image
@@ -429,10 +436,27 @@ efi_status_t efi_exit_boot_services(void *handle, void *priv,
{
struct efi_boot_memmap *map;
efi_status_t status;
+ efi_guid_t guid = EFI_EVENT_GROUP_BEFORE_EXIT_BOOT_SERVICES;
+ efi_event_t event;

if (efi_disable_pci_dma)
efi_pci_disable_bridge_busmaster();

+ status = efi_bs_call(create_event_ex, EFI_EVT_NOTIFY_SIGNAL,
+ EFI_TPL_CALLBACK, efi_before_ebs_notify, NULL,
+ &guid, &event);
+ if (status == EFI_SUCCESS) {
+ status = efi_bs_call(signal_event, event);
+ if (status != EFI_SUCCESS)
+ efi_err("%s - signal event failed: %02lx\n", __func__, status);
+
+ status = efi_bs_call(close_event, event);
+ if (status != EFI_SUCCESS)
+ efi_err("%s - close event failed: %02lx\n", __func__, status);
+ } else {
+ efi_err("%s - create event ex failed: %02lx\n", __func__, status);
+ }
+
status = efi_get_memory_map(&map, true);
if (status != EFI_SUCCESS)
return status;
diff --git a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efistub.h b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efistub.h
index 685098f9626f..e3f710823a29 100644
--- a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efistub.h
+++ b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/efistub.h
@@ -272,7 +272,7 @@ union efi_boot_services {
efi_status_t (__efiapi *wait_for_event)(unsigned long,
efi_event_t *,
unsigned long *);
- void *signal_event;
+ efi_status_t (__efiapi *signal_event)(efi_event_t);
efi_status_t (__efiapi *close_event)(efi_event_t);
void *check_event;
void *install_protocol_interface;
@@ -322,7 +322,7 @@ union efi_boot_services {
void *calculate_crc32;
void (__efiapi *copy_mem)(void *, const void *, unsigned long);
void (__efiapi *set_mem)(void *, unsigned long, unsigned char);
- void *create_event_ex;
+ efi_status_t (__efiapi *create_event_ex)(u32, int, void *, void *, void *, efi_event_t *);
};
struct {
efi_table_hdr_t hdr;
--
2.45.2