Hi Ilias, On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 02:20, Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodi...@linaro.org> wrote: > > Hi Mark, > > [...] > > > > > > Also, keep in mind that BootOrder and Boot#### only really work if > > > > there is runtime EFI variable support. So the boot menu should > > > > include options to select a device to boot from and use the default > > > > (removable media) bootloader from the ESP on that device. And a way > > > > to make this selection stick! Pretty much all x86 EFI implementations > > > > provide functionality like that. I suppose this could be done by > > > > populating the EFI variable store with appropriate Boot#### variables > > > > and manipulating BootOrder. But that would make it hard to generalize > > > > the boot menu to non-EFI boot flows. > > > > > > We are talking here about an EFI boot menu. Why do you mention non-EFI? > > > > Because Simon did, and I agree with him that U-Boot would be better of > > with a way to select a boot device that is independent of the boot > > mechanism. Suppose that as a user I want to install a Linux distro on > > my machine. I copy the installer for that distro to a USB key and I > > want to boot it. But my system is set up to boot from eMMC. U-Boot > > should make it easy to do a one-off boot from USB without burdening > > the user with making a choice between EFI and non-EFI boot methods and > > just pick the boot method that makes the machine boot from the USB > > key. > > The concept here is fine, but I think we should agree on how we > implement that. IMHO Simon's boot series patches is a huge step > forward compared to the distro_bootcmd. However EFI has it's own boot > manager and logic. So I see two ways forward: > 1. Simon's bootmethod has an abstract entry called 'EFI' or something > similar. In that case we just invoke the efi bootmgr. > 2. We merge the efibootmgr code into Simon's patches. > > But isn't that orthogonal to the current discussion? We can just go > implement it for EFI now and then wire it up to whatever Simon does.
Just one tweak here...I think the concept of a boot device (bootdev) could be useful as a way for EFI to find boot devices, so that U-Boot and EFI can share this logic / configuration. Regards, Simon
