FreeBSD EFI projects

[Rebecca Cran]

On 9/16/18 9:32 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

>
> What did you have in mind working on? I have a few things that are in
> various stages of completeness around this issue that I've not had
> time to polish off for the tree. Some I'd like to, but some may
> benefit from a fresh perspective. Also, there's a fair number of
> hidden bugs in the stuff committed around finding the whole path
> sometimes and the like.


One thing I've started working on is switching the ESP to use FAT32
everywhere except the ISO images (due to the limitation in the El Torito
format not supporting sufficiently large regions). The specifications
from EFI 1.10 onward have been clear that only FAT32 is supported for
the ESP (but that FAT12 and FAT16 must be supported for removable
devices), and I've read that some systems do enforce that. Unfortunately
that does mean the ESP must be a minimum of 33MB, but I think it's
worthwhile for increased compatibility.


Related to that, I've also been working on removing the FAT filesystem
templates that are currently checked into svn, instead generating them
during the release stage.


I've had some interest on #bsdmips about booting a 64-bit FreeBSD on old
Apple systems that use 32-bit EFI: it sounds like it should be possible,
and is something I'd like to try and get working.


I'd also really like to help move the changes to mount an existing ESP
during installation instead of clobbering it towards being committed, if
possible.


Another thing I'd like to work on is trying to catch corner cases like
in https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=210244 where
calling GetMemoryMap causes the memory map to become fragmented. I'd
also like to try and improve diagnostics, for example at the moment if
the system doesn't have enough memory to run the loader it silently
exits instead of displaying an error message.


And I would also be interested in taking a look at any projects you've
not completed yet, to see if I can help in any way.


-- 
Rebecca