Re: [PATCH] configs: layerscape: Disable the EFI_LOADER feature

[Tom Rini <trini@konsulko.com>]

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On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 06:18:45AM +0000, Z.Q. Hou wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tom Rini <trini@konsulko.com>
> > Sent: 2021年7月22日 23:26
> > To: Z.Q. Hou <zhiqiang.hou@nxp.com>; Michael Walle <michael@walle.cc>;
> > Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.glpk@gmx.de>
> > Cc: u-boot@lists.denx.de; Priyanka Jain <priyanka.jain@nxp.com>
> > Subject: Re: [PATCH] configs: layerscape: Disable the EFI_LOADER feature
> > 
> > On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 02:25:59PM +0800, Zhiqiang Hou wrote:
> > 
> > > From: Hou Zhiqiang <Zhiqiang.Hou@nxp.com>
> > >
> > > The feature BOOTENV_SHARED_EFI is not supported on layerscape boards,
> > > it didn't result kernel boot crash previously since there isn't the
> > > efi/boot/"BOOTEFI_NAME" and it skip calling of 'boot_efi_binary'.
> > >
> > > But since the commit f3866909e350 ("distro_bootcmd: call EFI bootmgr
> > > even without having /EFI/boot"), it will cause kernel boot crash as
> > > there isn't a valid fdt_addr and it finially uses the device tree blob
> > > of U-Boot and further cause errors.
> > >
> > > As this feature is enabled by default for armv7 and armv8, so disable
> > > it explicitly to avoid calling the 'scan_dev_for_efi'.
> > 
> > I'm not thrilled with this.  Why isn't the solution to get and keep in sync the
> > device trees, so that the tree U-Boot has is valid for the kernel?  I'm also
> > open to discussing f3866909e350 more.  But I'm really opposed to disabling
> > EFI_LOADER on modern platforms as that will make adoption of U-Boot in
> > device harder I feel.
>  
> I think it doesn't make sense for the platforms on which the EFI boot is not planed.
> As there isn't EFI boot needed components in the search path, finally the EFI boot
> will be skipped. I don't want to look into the EFI boot process, so I trend to disable
> the feature, is it acceptable?

I'm pretty confused then.  What are you planning to support on these
platforms since a whole lot of the aarch64 ecosystem assumes EFI+DT if
it's not EFI+ACPI for boot.  That includes I think all of the Linux
distributions out there except Armbian (maybe?) and for Yocto-based
images it depends on how you configure it (it is quite happy to make
grub-efi images).  So it seems like there's a number of issues of which
this seems to be working around them.

-- 
Tom

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