On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 02:55:26PM +0000, Grant Likely wrote:
> Personally I think we should encourage separate ESP and firmware partitions.

I'm still on the fence TBH... but whichever way we go I don't think
it will contradict anything introduced by this patch. That leaves me
inclined to post a github issue and then spin a v2 without mentioning
this.


Daniel.


> ________________________________
> From: Alexander Graf <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 2:00:54 PM
> To: Daniel Thompson
> Cc: Grant Likely; [email protected]; arm.ebbr-discuss
> Subject: Re: [Arm.ebbr-discuss] [PATCH] Describe protective partitioning for 
> platforms using shared storage
> 
> 
> 
> On 24.05.18 11:16, Daniel Thompson wrote:
> > On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 04:08:52PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote:
> >>>>> +MBR partitioning
> >>>>> +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >>>>> +
> >>>>> +Protective partitions should have a partition type of 0xF8 unless some
> >>>>> +immutable feature of the platform makes this impossible.
> >>>> I'd like to be rid of the caveat here too, but there is a lot more
> >>>> legacy to support with MBR.
> >>> The known behaviour wiki mentions that RPi dictates 0x0C.
> >>
> >> On the RPI we simply use the ESP as firmware partition, so we don't have 
> >> any
> >> need for a protective partition there.
> >
> > Hmmnnnn... this moves towards one of Grants' comments on the need to
> > follow up my work with some rules about managing the ESP. Specifically
> > what tells the OS that formatting the ESP will delete vital firmware
> > (normally it only destroys other OS and firmware *extensions*).
> 
> Firmware extensions may well be a driver necessary to actually boot the
> system. I'd be very surprised if any installer thought it was a good
> idea to remove the ESP. And if they do, it must be considered bad behavior.
> 
> >> So maybe we could just allow the ESP to have type 0xC instead of 0xEF if
> >> dictated by firmware? That should cover all cases except for Altera then
> >> which has its bootloader in a 0xAF or so partition.
> >
> > I think I'm OK with this.
> >
> > Do we *have* to specify the alternative partition type is 0x0C or can we
> > rely on searching for the EFI/ directory of FAT partitions when no other
> > ESP presents itself? I admit I'm struggling a little to see how the
> > pieces fit together but there are definitely clues that firmware might
> > choose to searching for the EFI directory (albeit for GPT rather than
> > MBR):
> >
> >   "UEFI implementations may allow the use of conforming FAT partitions
> >   which do not use the ESP GUID. Partition creators may prevent UEFI
> >   firmware from examining and using a specific partition by setting bit
> >   1 of the Partition Attributes"
> 
> I think what our ESP search order should be is:
> 
>   * ESP GUID / ESP MBR partition ID
>   * All partitions marked with bootable flag
> 
> That should cover all cases IMHO.
> 
> 
> Alex
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