FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 14, 2021 12:39 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: FreeBSD 13.0 released by rodgerd
Parent article: FreeBSD 13.0 released

If only distros supported it in their kernels and x86 systems had reliably non-terrible UEFI boot option choosers in their firmware I would recommend building the kernel commandline into the kernel and using CONFIG_EFI_STUB to produce kernels that the firmware can just boot directly. On a system like that, GRUB is just a great deal of pointless complexity duplicating the complexity already present in the firmware, and adding more things to go wrong in the boot path never seemed like a good idea to me. (But, of course, not all systems are like that, and on systems that aren't, GRUB is crucial: and since distros by and large don't want to support two completely incompatible ways to boot, they all go with GRUB.)

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 14, 2021 18:33 UTC (Wed) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (4 responses)

Systemd-boot is a good compromise. I got rid of GRUB years ago, and use systemd-boot as a chooser.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 14, 2021 19:37 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (3 responses)

systemd-boot is unfortunately not compatible with the Shim approach to UEFI secure boot, so it's difficult to make it a default. I don't think it's too much effort to add that support but it's somewhat outside their design goals. I should probably just put together a PR for it and see.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 14, 2021 21:24 UTC (Wed) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

It's also worth pointing out that there is a huge amount of effort making shim, secure boot and revocation if necessary work across several Linux distributions - it's not just something trivial and it is also being adapted to work across architectures.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 15, 2021 15:50 UTC (Thu) by lobachevsky (subscriber, #121871) [Link]

That sounds pretty cool. There's also work being done for automatic key enrollment [1], which could maybe obviate the need for a shim

[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/18716

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 15, 2021 17:39 UTC (Thu) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

I prefer to sign what I boot with my own keys, so I don't need the Shim. Systemd-boot supports Unified Kernel Images, which bundle all that is needed to boot in a single, UEFI-bootable image that I sign.

I realize it's not realistic for a distro to ask their users to install their certs on their machines, but this setup works well for me with my Arch Linux installation.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 15, 2021 0:26 UTC (Thu) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link]

While I tried Pop!_OS (or something like that) and didn't like it, their non-GRUB process seemed relatively clean. I believe it is systemd-boot. I didn't know it enough to debug my (personal) issues, so I bailed and installed good ol' Debian.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 15, 2021 1:34 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link] (1 responses)

> (But, of course, not all systems are like that, and on systems that aren't, GRUB is crucial: and since distros by and large don't want to support two completely incompatible ways to boot, they all go with GRUB.)

I think that's the other part of why I feel so negative about GRUB - my main working exposure to non-x86 BIOS/UEFI systems are s390x systems, which use zipl. So I don't even get to enjoy the portability!

Anyway, I think that's enough moaning about something people have been kind enough to give me for free.

FreeBSD 13.0 released

Posted Apr 15, 2021 13:31 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yes indeed. I've spent my whole time in this thread announcing a huge pile of working software given to us for nothing and maintained mostly by other people for free whining about it! Seriously, some people are just awful and right now that includes me.