[U-Boot] Question about booting Linux from efi_loader

Hi Alex,
Could you teach me a little bit about efi_loader?
I guess I am seriously missing something, but how to pass initramdisk address when you use bootefi (like when you use 'booti') ?
What I did:
tftpboot 90000000 Image tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb bootefi 90000000 98000000
The kernel will start booting, but fail to mount initramdisk, obviously because I am not passing initramdisk.

Hi Masahiro,
On 30.10.18 14:20, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
Hi Alex,
Could you teach me a little bit about efi_loader?
I guess I am seriously missing something, but how to pass initramdisk address when you use bootefi (like when you use 'booti') ?
What I did:
tftpboot 90000000 Image tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb bootefi 90000000 98000000
The kernel will start booting, but fail to mount initramdisk, obviously because I am not passing initramdisk.
This is great news!
The way loading an initrd works in UEFI land is that there is either
a) A boot loader that loads the initrd on behalf of Linux (like grub)
or
b) Linux loads the initrd from within its efi stub.
For a) you would need to set up a working grub.efi binary and a config. I guess that's a bit much to ask right now? The easiest way to test this path is to use an existing setup, such as a distro image:
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/tumbleweed/iso/openSUSE-Tumblewee...
You should be able to dd that onto an SD card / USB stick / anything and it should automatically boot into grub and with a bit of luck also into the kernel.
For b) theoretically you should be able to use the "initrd=" kernel command line parameter. I haven't used it myself yet, but I guess it might work? Give it a try :).
U-BOOT# setenv bootargs initrd=initrd.gz U-BOOT# bootefi 90000000 98000000
That should tell the Linux efi stub to load a file called "initrd.gz" from the same location the Image was loaded from (tftp in your case).
Alex

Hi Alex,
Thank you for your help.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 10:32 PM Alexander Graf agraf@suse.de wrote:
Hi Masahiro,
On 30.10.18 14:20, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
Hi Alex,
Could you teach me a little bit about efi_loader?
I guess I am seriously missing something, but how to pass initramdisk address when you use bootefi (like when you use 'booti') ?
What I did:
tftpboot 90000000 Image tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb bootefi 90000000 98000000
The kernel will start booting, but fail to mount initramdisk, obviously because I am not passing initramdisk.
This is great news!
The way loading an initrd works in UEFI land is that there is either
a) A boot loader that loads the initrd on behalf of Linux (like grub)
or
b) Linux loads the initrd from within its efi stub.
For a) you would need to set up a working grub.efi binary and a config. I guess that's a bit much to ask right now? The easiest way to test this path is to use an existing setup, such as a distro image:
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/tumbleweed/iso/openSUSE-Tumblewee...
You should be able to dd that onto an SD card / USB stick / anything and it should automatically boot into grub and with a bit of luck also into the kernel.
OK, I tried.
I copied the openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-aarch64-Current.iso into my USB drive by using 'dd' command.
U-BOOT> tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb U-BOOT> usb start U-BOOT> load usb 0:1 90000000 /EFI/BOOT/bootaa64.efi U-BOOT> bootefi 90000000 98000000
Then, I can see GRUB menu like follows on my serial console. Yay!
openSUSE Tumbleweed
Boot from Hard Disk � *Installation �│ Upgrade �│ More ... �│
"Boot from Hard Disk" did not work for my board as is, though. Maybe I will need to customize grub.efi
For b) theoretically you should be able to use the "initrd=" kernel command line parameter. I haven't used it myself yet, but I guess it might work? Give it a try :).
U-BOOT# setenv bootargs initrd=initrd.gz U-BOOT# bootefi 90000000 98000000
That should tell the Linux efi stub to load a file called "initrd.gz" from the same location the Image was loaded from (tftp in your case).
This did not work for me, but it would be worth digging into.

On 10/31/2018 03:52 AM, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your help.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 10:32 PM Alexander Graf agraf@suse.de wrote:
Hi Masahiro,
On 30.10.18 14:20, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
Hi Alex,
Could you teach me a little bit about efi_loader?
I guess I am seriously missing something, but how to pass initramdisk address when you use bootefi (like when you use 'booti') ?
What I did:
tftpboot 90000000 Image tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb bootefi 90000000 98000000
The kernel will start booting, but fail to mount initramdisk, obviously because I am not passing initramdisk.
This is great news!
The way loading an initrd works in UEFI land is that there is either
a) A boot loader that loads the initrd on behalf of Linux (like grub)
or
b) Linux loads the initrd from within its efi stub.
For a) you would need to set up a working grub.efi binary and a config. I guess that's a bit much to ask right now? The easiest way to test this path is to use an existing setup, such as a distro image:
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/tumbleweed/iso/openSUSE-Tumblewee...
You should be able to dd that onto an SD card / USB stick / anything and it should automatically boot into grub and with a bit of luck also into the kernel.
OK, I tried.
I copied the openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-aarch64-Current.iso into my USB drive by using 'dd' command.
U-BOOT> tftpboot 98000000 uniphier-ld11-global.dtb U-BOOT> usb start U-BOOT> load usb 0:1 90000000 /EFI/BOOT/bootaa64.efi U-BOOT> bootefi 90000000 98000000
Then, I can see GRUB menu like follows on my serial console. Yay!
Awesome :)
openSUSE Tumbleweed
Boot from Hard Disk � *Installation �│ Upgrade �│ More ... �│
"Boot from Hard Disk" did not work for my board as is, though. Maybe I will need to customize grub.efi
Oh, "Boot from Hard Disk" is really only "exit" - so it should just return you back to the U-Boot shell. The idea is that distro boot has a boot order and will try to boot the next medium if grub exits ;). The interesting entry is "Installation", as that should boot our distro kernel which might work to some extent ;)
For b) theoretically you should be able to use the "initrd=" kernel command line parameter. I haven't used it myself yet, but I guess it might work? Give it a try :).
U-BOOT# setenv bootargs initrd=initrd.gz U-BOOT# bootefi 90000000 98000000
That should tell the Linux efi stub to load a file called "initrd.gz" from the same location the Image was loaded from (tftp in your case).
This did not work for me, but it would be worth digging into.
Hm :/. I can put it on the list of things to look at :). It really should work, but I remember that Ard was trying to remove the dtb= and initrd= options from Linux because people really should load things using a boot loader ;).
Alex
participants (2)
-
Alexander Graf
-
Masahiro Yamada