[Arm-dev] Gigabyte MP30-AR0

Mon Feb 22 17:04:30 UTC 2016
Gordan Bobic <gordan at redsleeve.org>

On 2016-02-22 16:57, Michael Howard wrote:
> On 22/02/2016 16:47, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> 
>>> Anyway, the install does in fact succeed, which is great. I probably
>>> should have stuck with the LVM partitioning scheme but hey ho, I can
>>> re run things now that I know UEFI is working.
>>> 
>>> So, I have a minimal CentOS install with 4.2.0-0.21.el7.aarch64
>>> kernel. Great start, thanks to all.
>>> 
>>> There is no networking so I need to get the installer to recognise 
>>> the
>>> nics at install time.
>> 
>> So installer produces a bootable system, complete with a working 
>> kernel?
> 
> Yes, and no. It produces a bootable kernel.

Right, but how does that kernel get booted?
u-boot -> kernel ?
u-boot -> UEFI -> kernel ?
u-boot -> UEFI -> grub2 -> kernel ?

>> Does it use grub2 or does it do some magic to boot the kernel straight
>> from UEFI?
>> 
> 
> I haven't had the nerve to attempt to bun UEFI to SPI-NOR permanently,

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that. I cannot think of a good reason to burn
UEFI into SPI-NOR vs. chain-loading it from u-boot, since the boot
cascade is automatable.

> so following the install (and any subsequent ones) I've loaded it from
> u-boot manually and then booted directly from UEFI from there. I can
> of course automate that I suppose.

Right, so post-install the boot process is:
u-boot -> UEFI -> kernel ?

No grub2 involved?

The reason I am specifically asking about grub is because grub2 knows
how to load the kernel and initramfs off ZFS, and I would prefer to
not have to keep /boot on ext4 (even if /boot/efi has to be FAT -
because UEFI).

Gordan