On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 08:52, Shawn Guo <shawn.guo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 02:07:01PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: > > On Mon, 15 Mar 2021 at 04:11, Shawn Guo <shawn.guo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > On Tue, Mar 09, 2021 at 07:47:25PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: > > > > On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 at 19:10, Rob Clark <robdclark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > > ... > > > > > fwiw, the valid use-case for ACPI boot on these things is for distro > > > > > installer.. it might not be the shiny accelerated experience, but you > > > > > want to be able to get thru the installer and then install updates to > > > > > get latest kernel/dtb/etc > > > > > > > > > > it is a small use-case, but kinda an important step ;-) > > > > > > > > > > > > > That is a fair point. However, as I understand it, we need this to work around > > > > - the need to pass efi=novamap > > > > - broken poweroff on Flex5g > > > > > > One more: broken EFI variable runtime services on all Snapdragon laptops > > > > > > It's been another pain of running debian-installer (d-i) on these > > > laptops, where EFI NV variables are just stored on UFS disk. So after > > > Linux takes over the control of UFS, EFI NV variable runtime services > > > then become out of service. Currently, we have to apply a hack [1] on > > > d-i grub-installer to get around the issue, and it's been the only > > > remaining out-of-tree patch we have to carry for d-i. With this nice > > > `OverrideSupported` support, we will be able to drop that hack > > > completely. > > > > > > > > > > > So an installer either needs to set the EFI variable, or pass > > > > efi=novamap on the first boot. Note that there are no arm64 EFI > > > > systems known where efi=novamap causes problems. In fact, I would > > > > prefer to stop using SetVirtualAddressMap() altogether, as it does not > > > > provide any benefit whatsoever. So perhaps we should make efi=novamap > > > > the default and be done with it. > > > > > > > > Broken poweroff is hardly a showstopper for an installer, given that > > > > we cannot even install GRUB correctly. > > > > > > > > In summary, I am more than happy to collaborate constructively on this > > > > (which is why I wrote the patch), but I don't think we're at a point > > > > yet where this is the only thing standing in our way when it comes to > > > > a smooth out-of-the-box Linux installation experience. > > > > > > There might be more to be done for getting a smooth Linux installation > > > experience. But IMHO, this `OverrideSupported` thing is definitely > > > a big step to that. > > > > > > > So the problem here seems to be that grub-install (or efibootmgr) > > tolerates efivarfs being absent entirely, but bails out if it exists > > but gives an error when trying to access it, right? > > Yes, with EFI variables runtime service marked as unsupported, > efibootmgr will just exit on efi_variables_supported() check [1] in > a way that its parent process, i.e. grub-install, doesn't take as an > error. But otherwise, efibootmgr will go much further and exit with > a real error when trying to access efivars. > OK, so I suggest we fix efibootmgr, by extending the efi_variables_supported() check to perform a GetVariable() call on an arbitrary variable (e.g., BootOrder), and treat EFI_UNSUPPORTED as a special case that means that carrying on is pointless. (but someone please confirm that the snapdragon efi firmware does return EFI_UNSUPPORTED and not some other return value when calling GetVariable() from under the OS)
