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x86, efi: Add EFI boot stub documentation
Since we can't expect every user to read the EFI boot stub code it seems prudent to have a couple of paragraphs explaining what it is and how it works. The "initrd=" option in particular is tricky because it only understands absolute EFI-style paths (backslashes as directory separators), and until now this hasn't been documented anywhere. This has tripped up a couple of users. Cc: Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Matt Fleming <matt.fleming@intel.com> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1331907517-3985-4-git-send-email-matt@console-pimps.org Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
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The EFI Boot Stub | ||
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On the x86 platform, a bzImage can masquerade as a PE/COFF image, | ||
thereby convincing EFI firmware loaders to load it as an EFI | ||
executable. The code that modifies the bzImage header, along with the | ||
EFI-specific entry point that the firmware loader jumps to are | ||
collectively known as the "EFI boot stub", and live in | ||
arch/x86/boot/header.S and arch/x86/boot/compressed/eboot.c, | ||
respectively. | ||
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By using the EFI boot stub it's possible to boot a Linux kernel | ||
without the use of a conventional EFI boot loader, such as grub or | ||
elilo. Since the EFI boot stub performs the jobs of a boot loader, in | ||
a certain sense it *IS* the boot loader. | ||
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The EFI boot stub is enabled with the CONFIG_EFI_STUB kernel option. | ||
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**** How to install bzImage.efi | ||
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The bzImage located in arch/x86/boot/bzImage must be copied to the EFI | ||
System Partiion (ESP) and renamed with the extension ".efi". Without | ||
the extension the EFI firmware loader will refuse to execute it. It's | ||
not possible to execute bzImage.efi from the usual Linux file systems | ||
because EFI firmware doesn't have support for them. | ||
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**** Passing kernel parameters from the EFI shell | ||
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Arguments to the kernel can be passed after bzImage.efi, e.g. | ||
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fs0:> bzImage.efi console=ttyS0 root=/dev/sda4 | ||
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**** The "initrd=" option | ||
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Like most boot loaders, the EFI stub allows the user to specify | ||
multiple initrd files using the "initrd=" option. This is the only EFI | ||
stub-specific command line parameter, everything else is passed to the | ||
kernel when it boots. | ||
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The path to the initrd file must be an absolute path from the | ||
beginning of the ESP, relative path names do not work. Also, the path | ||
is an EFI-style path and directory elements must be separated with | ||
backslashes (\). For example, given the following directory layout, | ||
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fs0:> | ||
Kernels\ | ||
bzImage.efi | ||
initrd-large.img | ||
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Ramdisks\ | ||
initrd-small.img | ||
initrd-medium.img | ||
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to boot with the initrd-large.img file if the current working | ||
directory is fs0:\Kernels, the following command must be used, | ||
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fs0:\Kernels> bzImage.efi initrd=\Kernels\initrd-large.img | ||
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Notice how bzImage.efi can be specified with a relative path. That's | ||
because the image we're executing is interpreted by the EFI shell, | ||
which understands relative paths, whereas the rest of the command line | ||
is passed to bzImage.efi. |
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