Re: UEFI support in boot image

[Marius Bakke]

Marius Bakke  writes:

> Ludovic Courtès  writes:
>
>> Hello Marius,
>>
>> Marius Bakke  skribis:
>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep hammering at this and should
>>> hopefully have something usable within a few weeks. Currently, need to
>>> figure out why the qemu builder can't find the ISO8859-1 kernel module.
>>
>> Any news from the front?  :-)
>
> I'm sorry, I haven't been able to work on this at all. Will pick it up again
> now though, if we're lucky I might have something usable tomorrow.

See https://bugs.gnu.org/26815 :-)



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Re: UEFI support in boot image

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Marius,

Marius Bakke  skribis:

> Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep hammering at this and should
> hopefully have something usable within a few weeks. Currently, need to
> figure out why the qemu builder can't find the ISO8859-1 kernel module.

Any news from the front?  :-)

Ludo’.

Re: UEFI support in boot image

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Marius!

Marius Bakke  skribis:

> I've attached a few patches as a humble beginning, but currently the
> "format-partition" code in (gnu build vm) needs to learn some
> filesystem-specific parameters. So, I don't think it will be ready for
> the upcoming release.
>
> I have also done some reading and don't think we can use isolinux as it
> requires an image in ISO 9660 format. Nor does the syslinux utilities
> actually support chainloading grub from UEFI as I had hoped.

OK.

> So I think we'll have to offer UEFI as a standalone image, at least to
> begin with. Unfortunately I also believe it needs to be generated from a
> UEFI system, but this grub limitation can hopefully be lifted.

Providing a separate standalone image is reasonable IMO.

Anyway, I’m happy to see this patch set!

> From 25b01f9a219338580b6f7a7449bba8ff90c2176c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Marius Bakke 
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2017 10:47:38 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH 1/4] vm: Add support for arbitrary partition flags.
>
> * gnu/build/vm.scm (): Change BOOTABLE? to FLAGS.
> (initialize-partition-table): Pass each flag to parted.
> (initialize-hard-disk): Search for root partition by "boot" flag.
> * gnu/system/vm.scm (qemu-image): Adjust partitions accordingly.

[...]

> @@ -141,7 +141,7 @@ the #:references-graphs parameter of 'derivation'."
>(sizepartition-size)
>(file-system partition-file-system (default "ext4"))
>(label   partition-label (default #f))
> -  (bootable?   partition-bootable? (default #f))
> +  (flags   partition-flags (default '()))
>(initializer partition-initializer (default (const #t

So ‘flags’ must be a list of strings, and each string is something
Parted recognizes, right?

It would be slightly nicer to make it a list of symbols.

> +  (define (find-root-partition partitions)
> +"Return the first partition found with the boot flag set."
> +;; FIXME: This probably does not work. What's the best way to do this?
> +(find (match-lambda
> +(($  _ _ _ _ flags)
> + (member "boot" flags)))
> +  partitions))

Why wouldn’t it work?  LGTM.

BTW, in this case, I’d recommend using ‘partition-flags’ instead of
‘match’ with the 4 wildcards; probably safer.  :-)

That said, it’s probably best to keep

  (define (partition-bootable? partition)
(member "boot" (partition-flags partition)))

>(let* ((partitions (initialize-partition-table device partitions))
> - (root   (find partition-bootable? partitions))
> + (root   (find-root-partition partitions))

… and keep this line unchanged (‘find-foo’ procedures are an
anti-pattern in a way.)

> From 9db90ea41a94ecbe42bba88de1c2e3ac607d5ea4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Marius Bakke 
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2017 10:55:22 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH 2/4] vm: Unconditionally add a small ESP partition.
>
> * gnu/system/vm.scm (qemu-image): Append 20MB FAT32 partition.

[...]

>(partitions (list (partition
>   (size #$(- disk-image-size
> -(* 10 (expt 2 20
> +(* 30 (expt 2 20
>   (label #$file-system-label)
>   (file-system #$file-system-type)
>   (flags '("boot"))
> - (initializer initialize)
> + (initializer initialize))
> +(partition
> + ;; Append a small FAT32 partition for
> + ;; use with UEFI bootloaders.
> + (size (* 20 (expt 2 20)))
> + (label "gnu-esp")
> + (file-system "vfat")
> + (flags '("esp"))

Should we do it conditionally, only when targeting UEFI?

(BTW, what’s “esp”?)

> From 4306bae25d6110ec52b8bbe3ad8b55f2c4c18fca Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Marius Bakke 
> Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2017 22:21:28 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH 3/4] gnu: dosfstools: Enable compatibility symlinks.
>
> * gnu/packages/disk.scm (dosfstools)[arguments]<#:configure-flags>: New
> parameter.

LGTM.

> From d3e733739edebfd42efd70e7cc6335f3862f1ed5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Marius Bakke 
> Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2017 22:25:43 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH 4/4] gnu: vm: Add FAT32 utilities in base image.
>
> * gnu/system/vm.scm (qemu-image): Add DOSFSTOOLS to the closure.

OK.

Thank you for working on it!

Ludo’.