Re: [gentoo-dev] Proper installation path for efi binaries (.efi)

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Martin Pluskal <martin@pluskal.org> wrote:
> On 4.2.2013 23:59, Greg KH wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 11:45:22PM +0100, Martin Pluskal wrote:
>>> On 4.2.2013 23:34, Greg KH wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 08:13:58PM +0100, Martin Pluskal wrote:
>>>>> Hi
>>>>>    I am curious what is the proper path for installation of efi binaries
>>>>> (such as shim.efi) in gentoo. I don't think that installing them
>>>>> directly into /boot/efi... is proper way - it seems to me that
>>>>> /usr/lib64/efi or /usr/libexec/efi is more appropriate location for
>>>>> them. What's your opinion?
>>>>
>>>> It depends on if you want the bootloader to use the binary or not.  If
>>>> you do, it needs to be in /boot/efi/, otherwise it will never be able to
>>>> be run by the UEFI system.
>>> Well, in order to boot you have to place .efi into /boot/efi, I am not
>>> sure if it is the best idea to directly install everything with .efi
>>> into /boot/efi. As far as I know, elilo is installed into /usr/lib/elilo
>>> and grub2 is placed into /boot/efi by grub2-install.
>>
>> If elilo is in /usr/lib/elilo, the UEFI bios can not run the binary as
>> it can't even see the filesystem to read the binary from.
> Well it cannot, elilo.efi has to be placed to /boot/efi, install path is
> however /usr/lib/elilo/elilo.efi.
>>
>> So how can anything that is .efi _not_ be in /boot/efi and still work?
> I am talking about location to which .efi is supposed to be placed after
> installation, not necessary from which it can work.
>>
>> Have you tried this out on your system with any success?
> Why would I try it? I am not suggesting that it would work. After you
> emerge elilo or grub2 you are still not able to boot unless you do other
> steps (grub2-install or cp elilo.efi /boot/efi... && efibootmgr ... etc.)
>>
>> What exactly is the issue you are trying to solve here?
> I am thinking about creating ebuild for shim. I was wondering if there
> is any policy or suggestion where to place .efi binaries or how to
> handle them in gentoo - it seems that there is none so perhaps there
> should be agreed on what best practice is (install directly into
> /boot/efi or install else and let user manually copy .efi to /boot/efi
> or something completely different (eselect efi ...)).
>
> In suse default path is for example /usr/lib64/efi/:
> ls /usr/lib64/efi/:
> MokManager.efi  elilo.efi  shim-suse.efi  shim.efi
> xen-4.2.1_02-0.7.2.efi  xen-4.2.efi  xen-4.efi  xen.efi
>
> yet /boot/efi contains only elilo.efi

Can you even guarantee that /boot is mounted when your package is
installed? That would be my major concern on Gentoo...
-A

>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> greg k-h
>>
> thanks
>
> Martin
>
>