Cure found for kernel updates

Chuck Anderson cra at WPI.EDU
Thu May 15 03:59:41 UTC 2014


On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 11:07:15PM +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org>wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:27:36PM +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:03 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org
> > >wrote:
> > > > Remove the requirement that the ESP be $BOOT. The downside of that is
> > > > that we'll then have *yet another* partition (/boot, because we want
> > > > kernels stored on a filesystem that supports xattrs, /boot/efi for the
> > > > ESP, /boot/whatever for storing the config fragments) which isn't a
> > huge
> > > > issue for GPT but would be annoying with MBR.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Can't we store those fragments in the same filesystem /boot is on?
> >
> > We can, but the spec requires that it be VFAT, and it's not reasonable
> > for us to make /boot VFAT (no selinux labelling, for instance).
> >
> 
> I guess this is so more minimal bootloaders could read it?
> Another partition is not something I'd want either. What are the downsides
> of
> putting those files on the ESP, besides it not being a standard practice for
> other OS providers?

VFAT is fragile and fsck.vfat can't always recover it.  The ESP should
be mounted read-only or not mounted at all to preserve its integrity,
and it should never be written to after the initial bootloader
install.


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