Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH OSSTEST v2 11/19] Debian: Fixup UEFI boot order during install

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2015-06-18 at 18:57 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Ian Campbell writes ("[PATCH OSSTEST v2 11/19] Debian: Fixup UEFI boot order 
> during install"):
> > Debian inserts itself before any existing entries, including the PXE
> > one, meaning we otherwise cannot remotely regroove the box. Preseed
> > some commands to reset the boot order to BootCurrent i.e. how we
> > booted (so the PXE entry).
> > 
> > There is still a window between the Debian entry being added (by
> > grub-installer.udeb) and us removing it, a failure (e.g. power cycle)
> > in that interval would require manual action to fixup.
> 
> This seems a pretty serious bug.  Is there a way to avoid it ?

Unfortunately not as far as I can tell, it seems to be a major
shortcoming of the way UEFI boot order is managed both from the UEFI UI
and via the Linux command line tools. FWIW I was inspired by the way
XenRT has to do this too (so it is a problem for x86 too).

grub-installer happens pretty late in the install, so the gap until the
late command which repairs things is short, but not ideal I agree.

I think the path to a fix would be something like:

efibootmgr to gain an option to add an entry but not add it to the
bootloader (or to not put the new entry at the head of the list).

grub-install (from main grub package) to then gain an option causing it
to pass the new efibootmgr option.

grub-installer udeb (i.e. the grub part of debian installer) to gain a
presseded way of setting that option when calling grub-install.

:-/

Ian.


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