Re: Review D58990: freebsd-update: automatically update EFI and BIOS bootloaders on install

In reply to: Mark Millard : "Re: Review D58990: freebsd-update: automatically update EFI and BIOS bootloaders on install"
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From: Ronald Pagani Jr (ronald.pagani.jr) <ronald.pagani.jr_at_dev.us.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:50:47 UTC
On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 8:26 AM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 8/20/26 01:08, Ronald Pagani Jr (ronald.pagani.jr) wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 12:37 AM Stefan Esser <se@freebsd.org
> > <mailto:se@freebsd.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     Am 19.08.26 um 18:30 schrieb Ronald Pagani Jr (ronald.pagani.jr):
> >     > I've submitted a patch to automatically update the EFI bootloader
> >     on the ESP
> >     > during freebsd-update install:
> >     >
> >     > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58990 <https://reviews.freebsd.org/
> >     D58990> <https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58990 <https://
> >     reviews.freebsd.org/D58990>>
> >     >
> >     > The problem: freebsd-update updates /boot/loader.efi on the root
> >     filesystem,
> >     > but the UEFI firmware boots from loader.efi on the EFI System
> >     Partition — a
> >     > separate FAT32 partition that freebsd-update never touches. After
> >     a major
> >     > version upgrade the ESP loader can be left several versions stale.
> >     Since 14.1
> >     > removed the lua_path==nil compatibility shim from core.lua, this
> >     mismatch
> >     > produces a hard boot failure. If the user also ran zpool upgrade,
> >     the system is
> >     > completely unbootable without external media.
> >     >
> >     > The patch hooks efi_bootloader_update.sh into install_run() in
> >     freebsd-
> >     > update.sh. It auto-detects the ESP via gpart, fingerprints
> /EFI/BOOT/
> >     > BOOTx64.efi before touching it (multi-OS safe), creates /EFI/
> >     FreeBSD/loader.efi
> >     > if absent, updates NVRAM, and handles BIOS GPT bootcode as well.
> >     Opt-out via
> >     > UpdateBootloader=no in freebsd-update.conf.
> >     >
> >     > Tested on FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 amd64 (UEFI, ZFS, NVMe). 197
> unit/
> >     > integration/error tests available at:
> >     >
> >     > https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829 <https://
> >     github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829> <https://github.com/
> >     RZA- <https://github.com/RZA->
> >     > SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829>
> >
> >     I'm using a much simpler version that just covers my setup, and would
> >     like to replace it by a more general version.
> >
> >     This fails for me in lines 231 to 236 since device names are
> expected,
> >     but zpool status returns a diskid based path:
> >
> >     $ zpool status zroot
> >        pool: zroot
> >       state: ONLINE
> >     config:
> >
> >             NAME                          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
> >             zroot                         ONLINE       0     0     0
> >               diskid/DISK-8ESKF03YZ0EAp2  ONLINE       0     0     0
> >
> >     errors: No known data errors
> >
> >     $ sh efi_bootloader_update.sh --dry-run
> >     freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: UEFI
> >     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  No boot disks found
> >     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  Boot disk discovery failed
> >     freebsd-update: [bootloader] WARN:  If using hardware RAID or an
> exotic
> >     topology, update the bootloader manually
> >
> >     My version uses "gpart show -p" to list boot partitions and to fetch
> >     the corresponding device names:
> >
> >     $ gpart show -p | grep -w efi
> >              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-8ESKF03YZ0EAp1  efi  (255M)
> >              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-81S0A0K7FJDHp1  efi  (255M)
> >              2048      522240  diskid/DISK-81S0A0L1FJDHp1  efi  (255M)
> >
> >     > This is complementary to Warner Losh's D45890 (loader version-
> >     check warnings).
> >     > Feedback welcome.
> >     Regards
> >     STefan
> >
> >
> >
> > I've just pushed a kern.disks implementation following recent review
> > comments, and I'm wondering if that works for you?
> >
> > https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829/blob/revision-2/
> > src/efi_bootloader_update.sh <https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-
> > for-bug279829/blob/revision-2/src/efi_bootloader_update.sh>
> >
> >
> > Best,
> > Ron
> >
>
> On a Windows Dev Kit 2023 (with UFS) it gets: "freebsd-update:
> [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown"
>
> # sh -x efi_bootloader_update.sh --dry-run --verbose
> + [ -n '' ]
> + _EFI_BOOTLOADER_UPDATE_SH=1
> + : /boot/loader.efi
> + : 0
> + : 0
> + : 1
> + : /boot/pmbr
> + : /boot/gptzfsboot
> + : /boot/gptboot
> + _EFI_FINGERPRINT_THRESHOLD=2
> + _efi_esp_mp=''
> + _efi_esp_did_mount=0
> + _efi_tmp_mounts=''
> + _efi_script_name=efi_bootloader_update.sh
> + [ efi_bootloader_update.sh '=' efi_bootloader_update.sh ]
> + [ 2 -gt 0 ]
> + EFI_DRY_RUN=1
> + shift
> + [ 1 -gt 0 ]
> + EFI_VERBOSE=1
> + shift
> + [ 0 -gt 0 ]
> + update_bootloaders
> + local 'total_errors=0'
> + local rc
> + efi_check_prerequisites
> + local 'ok=0'
> + id -u
> + [ 0 '!=' 0 ]
> + sysctl -n security.jail.jailed
> + [ 0 '=' 1 ]
> + [ ! -f /boot/loader.efi ]
> + [ ! -s /boot/loader.efi ]
> + return 0
> + rc=0
> + local boot_method 'fallback_binary='
> + efi_boot_method
> + local m
> + sysctl -n machdep.bootmethod
> + m=''
> + echo unknown
> + return
> + boot_method=unknown
> + _efi_info 'Boot method detected: unknown'
> + _efi_log 'INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown'
> + echo 'freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown'
> freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  Boot method detected: unknown
> + [ unknown '=' UEFI ]
> + trap efi_cleanup_mounts EXIT INT TERM
> + [ unknown '=' UEFI ]
> + local bios_list
> + efi_discover_all_bios_parts
> + local disks
> + sysctl -n kern.disks
> + tr ' ' '\n'
> + disks='da0
> nda0'
> + local disk 'found=0'
> + [ -z da0 ]
> + local parts
> + gpart show da0
> + awk -v 'd=da0' '$4 == "freebsd-boot" { print d, $3 }'
> + parts=''
> + [ -n '' ]
> + [ -z nda0 ]
> + local parts
> + gpart show nda0
> + awk -v 'd=nda0' '$4 == "freebsd-boot" { print d, $3 }'
> + parts=''
> + [ -n '' ]
> + [ 0 -eq 0 ]
> + return 1
> + bios_list=''
> + true
> + [ -n '' ]
> + [ 0 -gt 0 ]
> + [ 1 '=' 1 ]
> + _efi_info '[DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete (no changes made)'
> + _efi_log 'INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete (no changes made)'
> + echo 'freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update
> complete (no changes made)'
> freebsd-update: [bootloader] INFO:  [DRY RUN] Bootloader update complete
> (no changes made)
> + return 0
> + exit 0
> + efi_cleanup_mounts
> + local mp
> + _efi_tmp_mounts=''
>
> (I had reported the empty sysctl -n machdep.bootmethod result for the
> context in the review, violating an assumption of the scripting. I've no
> clue how common the empty result might be overall.)
>
> --
> ===
> Mark Millard
> marklmi at yahoo.com



Mark,

Would you be able to try this latest commit (also for this configuration)?

https://github.com/RZA-SF/freebsd-patch-for-bug279829/blob/revision-2/src/efi_bootloader_update.sh

Best,
Ron