id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
5819	UEFI support	zeckma	zeckma	"We tell users to go to BLFS to build and setup GRUB for UEFI boot support. The issue with this is that most systems nowadays use UEFI booting, and a lot don't even have a legacy boot option available. Being told to go to another book for this is clumsy, and also requires the user to find a way to get the packages from BLFS. Some users are led to believe that they have to install more than 5 packages just for UEFI support. They are also told pretty late in the process, instead of being told upfront during the partitioning stage the situation regarding BIOS and UEFI.

This has been a long standing issue and I think it's time we work something out here. There already has been some work in branches me and xry111 created. I worked mainly on documentation, while xry111 worked on instructions. This was done in early 12.4. Fundamentally, the issue is simple. We don't need FreeType2 or efibootmgr at all. All that's needed is to build GRUB as shown in BLFS, which only adds the `--with-platform=efi` and `--target=x86_64` parameters, and do a normal install from there. For doing `grub-install`, just add the `--removable` flag so that the EFI file gets put in a hardcoded location, skipping the need for efibootmgr. We should still keep efibootmgr in BLFS to better handle EFI entries if needed.

This has been known about for a little while now. There is an issue though, regarding `--target=x86_64` specifically, and handling different architectures. Most solutions would look fine when rendered, for humans to read. But jhalfs would break as it wouldn't reconcile with which instructions to actually run. We have to find a way to create XML that doesn't break jhalfs, or alter jhalfs somehow to reconcile.

It's been a while since this issue was being worked on, xry111 knew most about this issue. So for further info, it'd be good for him to better shed light on the issue.

Ideally, I want this coming in at 12.5. This was planned before 12.4, but the issue stopped us from working on it."	enhancement	closed	normal	13.1	Book	git	normal	fixed