The Next Linux Kernel Will Further Fend Off Buggy EFI Firmware

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Next Linux Kernel Will Further Fend Off Buggy EFI Firmware

The EFI support code within the mainline Linux kernel continues to be improved upon. While EFI firmware has matured in the past few years to become more reliable, there still are systems/motherboards shipping with various bugs. One of the additions for this next kernel release will better handle rare cases where buggy firmware could hang the kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.20-EFI-Prevent-Hangs

[Adarion]

Why doesn't intel stomp (U)EFI for good in favour of Coreboot/Libre* anyway?
There has been so much pain. And in the end the FW is just supposed to boot the HW and present a trimmed down interface with a few settings and a little HW overview to the user. Worked back in the days with binaries of roughly 64K size. Okay, more complex hardware today, but then make it 512 K if there is so much need. But nobody needs 8 MiB of bugs & backdoors at firmware level.

[caligula]

Why doesn't intel stomp (U)EFI for good in favour of Coreboot/Libre* anyway?
There has been so much pain. And in the end the FW is just supposed to boot the HW and present a trimmed down interface with a few settings and a little HW overview to the user. Worked back in the days with binaries of roughly 64K size. Okay, more complex hardware today, but then make it 512 K if there is so much need. But nobody needs 8 MiB of bugs & backdoors at firmware level.

Quite recently, ARM/MIPS router boards came with NOR Flash with a full capacity of 8 MiB and that included the kernel, bootloader, firmware blobs, userspace init system and services, hot plug manager, support for a wide range of USB dongles (serial, ethernet, cdc, even audio). Even if one boots a desktop computer, the 8 MiB has enough space to hold systemd-boot, and a recent kernel with all the drivers for that particular hardware (sans firmware blobs). It's really disturbing that they need this much space for shady background services/hypervisors.

[cj.wijtmans]

Quite recently, ARM/MIPS router boards came with NOR Flash with a full capacity of 8 MiB and that included the kernel, bootloader, firmware blobs, userspace init system and services, hot plug manager, support for a wide range of USB dongles (serial, ethernet, cdc, even audio). Even if one boots a desktop computer, the 8 MiB has enough space to hold systemd-boot, and a recent kernel with all the drivers for that particular hardware (sans firmware blobs). It's really disturbing that they need this much space for shady background services/hypervisors.

only 8? the kernel is easily 2. And you might wanna have a backup kernel or two in there....

[Adarion]

I do my own kernels at Gentoo and for the smallest systems I use (Geode LX, -Os flag) I end up roughly with 1.5 MiB kernel images (plus a few modules, but those are not boot critical modules (e.g. rarely used file systems,...).

[caligula]

only 8? the kernel is easily 2. And you might wanna have a backup kernel or two in there....

OpenWRT devices (at least those with 8-16 MB of flash) don't have a backup kernel in there, there's no space. They have a safe mode boot though (it disables the RW partition). I guess you could program the bootloader to switch the kernel to be booted if a button is down. Well, OpenWRT dosn't necessarily use the most efficient compression available (xz).