On Wednesday 18 December 2024 12:13:59 GMT Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> I've been having fun with systemd-boot.
I've been using bootctl from systemd-utils for some years; ever since I
graduated to an EFI system. I don't follow the wiki because of the resulting
impenetrable thicket of unpronounceable names and 32-digit hex numbers. Fine
for a distro builder, perhaps, but not for me thank you - especially as I want
a selection of kernels to boot from, which I never did work out how to achieve
following the official advice.
My method has only one related USE variable:
sys-apps/systemd-utils boot kernel-install
My EFI partition, unformatted and not mentioned in /etc/fstab, is /dev/
nvme0n1p1. 0n1p2 is the FAT-32 /boot.
# tree -L 3 /boot
/boot
├── [config files from make install]
├── early_ucode.cpio
├── EFI
│ ├── BOOT
│ │ └── BOOTX64.EFI
│ ├── Linux
│ └── systemd
│ └── systemd-bootx64.efi
├── intel-uc.img
├── loader
│ ├── entries
│ │ ├── 06-gentoo-rescue-6.6.52.conf
│ │ ├── 07-gentoo-rescue-6.6.52.nonet.conf
│ │ ├── 08-gentoo-rescue-6.6.62.conf
│ │ ├── 09-gentoo-rescue-6.6.62.nonet.conf
│ │ ├── 30-gentoo-6.6.62.conf
│ │ ├── 32-gentoo-6.6.62.nox.conf
│ │ └── 34-gentoo-6.6.62.nonet.conf
│ ├── entries.srel
│ ├── loader.conf
│ └── random-seed
├── [System.map files from make install]
├── vmlinuz-6.6.38-gentoo-rescue
├── vmlinuz-6.6.52-gentoo
├── vmlinuz-6.6.52-gentoo-rescue
├── vmlinuz-6.6.62-gentoo
└── vmlinuz-6.6.62-gentoo-rescue
This is the relevant parts of the kernel make script on my little i5 NUC box:
cd /usr/src/linux
time (make -j4 && make modules_install &&\
make install && rm -f /boot/*old)
emerge @module-rebuild @x11-module-rebuild
rm -f /boot/early_ucode.cpio.new &&\
iucode_tool -q -S --write-earlyfw=/boot/early_ucode.cpio.new \
-tr /boot/early_ucode.cpio -tb /lib/firmware/intel-ucode &&\
mv -v /boot/early_ucode.cpio.new /boot/early_ucode.cpio &&\
echo
Then all I have to do is some simple mmv and sed -i on the files in /boot/
loader/entries and loader.conf. Also remove obsolete kernels, configs and maps
from /boot. Oh, and bootctl set-default 30-gentoo-6.6.62.conf if it's a remote
machine and I won't be present at boot time.
--->8
> Could somebody perhaps suggest a better boot loader to me? I need to be
> able to chose between several kernels at booting time, but I certainly
> don't want something "refined" like grub - I just need what I thought
> systemd-boot actually was before yesterday.
That's even worse than what I was suffering until I developed my own system.
> Thanks in advance!
Hope that helps.
--
Regards,
Peter.
