Re: [OE-core] [PATCH v3 01/11] systemd: enable efi support by default

[Adrian Freihofer <adrian.freihofer@gmail.com>]

Hi Mikko

On Fri, 2025-04-04 at 19:29 +0300, Mikko Rapeli via
lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> For example genericarm64 enables "efi" in MACHINE_FEATURES
> and in u-boot. Boot without "efi" in systemd works with
> EFI protocols but for example efivars is not mounted at
> all so various checks fail in userspace. Fix these by
> enabling "efi" support by default to avoid making
> it machine specific. Fixes efivars mount to
> /sys/firmware/efi/efivars etc.

My point is that many OE/Yocto-based embedded products rely on a fully
redundant and power fail-safe firmware update and boot implementation.
So far I have not understood how this could be implemented in a
similarly robust way based on EFI as we have now without EFI-based
boot-up. I would therefore like to see the EFI implementation remain
opt-in until it covers at least the most important use cases for robust
embedded systems. What I primarily miss with EFI is a reference
implementation for an A/B update system without having to rely on a FAT
partition without journaling. Please correct me if I'm missing
something!

Would it make sense to declare poky as an EFI ready reference
distribution by enabling the efi DISTRO_FEATURE there, rather than
starting with making recipes enabling efi unconditionally?

Could something like this in poky.conf work?
DISTRO_FEATURES:append:aarch64 = " efi"
DISTRO_FEATURES:append:riscv64 = " efi"
DISTRO_FEATURES:append:x86-64 = " efi"

Thank you and regards,
Adrian

> 
> Signed-off-by: Mikko Rapeli <mikko.rapeli@linaro.org>
> ---
>  meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd_257.4.bb | 3 ++-
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd_257.4.bb
> b/meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd_257.4.bb
> index 64fb8fe69a..06e5621398 100644
> --- a/meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd_257.4.bb
> +++ b/meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd_257.4.bb
> @@ -68,13 +68,14 @@ PAM_PLUGINS = " \
>  "
>  
>  PACKAGECONFIG ??= " \
> -    ${@bb.utils.filter('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'acl audit apparmor efi
> ldconfig pam pni-names selinux smack polkit seccomp', d)} \
> +    ${@bb.utils.filter('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'acl audit apparmor
> ldconfig pam pni-names selinux smack polkit seccomp', d)} \
>      ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'minidebuginfo',
> 'coredump elfutils', '', d)} \
>      ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi', 'rfkill', '',
> d)} \
>      ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'x11', 'xkbcommon', '',
> d)} \
>      ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'sysvinit', 'sysvinit',
> 'link-udev-shared', d)} \
>      backlight \
>      binfmt \
> +    efi \
>      gshadow \
>      hibernate \
>      hostnamed \
> 
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