GPT boot has less features than legacy MBR-based one (Was: UEFI, loader.efi and /boot.config)

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 9:29 AM Lev Serebryakov <lev at freebsd.org wrote:

> Hello Rebecca,
>
> Sunday, January 20, 2019, 7:27:56 AM, you wrote:
>
> > Ultimately, UEFI doesn't care about disks and partitions: it only really
> knows
> > about ESPs -- FAT12/16/32 formatted partitions that contain the EFI
> directory
> > structure. For now, that means /EFI/BOOT/BOOT{x64,i386,aa64,arm}.efi,
> the
> > Microsoft boot loader in /EFI/Microsoft and GRUB/shim in /EFI/fedora,
> /EFI/
> > opensuse etc.
>  Problem is (for me), our code we put in ESP partition doesn't care about
> several FreeBSD partitions and ability to continue boot from any of them in
> simple way.


set currdev=diskXpY:
boot

Is too complicated? Boot1.efi doesn't allow that, but loader.efi does.

I have been said, that code in ESP partition looks and some EFI
> variables (BootNext & Co), and I could "Set them in BIOS", but all this
> thread doesn't have any clues HOW could I set them in BIOS. Need I EFI
> shell
> (which, according to this message must be installed separately!), or
> something?
>

The EFI shell let's you select which .efi to run in a generic way. Most
BIOSes have the ability to boot to this. There are multiple ways to do
this. There are other things that could also be done, true, and it would be
cool if we had it in the menu...

So many things you'd want to be able to do you can. There are gaps we can
fill in, but booting the FreeBSD on a different partition is easy today
from the loader prompt...

 And I repeat for 4th or 5th time: subject is about GPT. GPT/Legacy has same
> problem :-)
>

I don't care about that as much :). Others might, and I'd integrate
reasonable changes here. I care a lot UEFI, and have put a ton of work into
making it more than the most minimal thing to boot.

Warner

-- 
> Best regards,
>  Lev                            mailto:lev at FreeBSD.org
>
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