systemd Lands SD-Boot, Its EFI Boot Manager & Stub Loader

A few weeks ago I wrote how systemd developers were planning to add Gummiboot as a UEFI boot manager to systemd. Now, following the just-released systemd 219, they've gone ahead and added their initial code for providing systemd with a EFI boot manager.

Kay Sievers, a longtime systemd developer and also Gummiboot developer, added sd-boot to the systemd source tree this morning. Sd-boot is a (U)EFI boot manager and stub loader. This tacks on almost four thousand lines of code to systemd. A boot manager is the newest feature for systemd, which they've added in the name of security to better control and tighten down the boot process.

After pushing in the initial sd-boot code, Sievers then added sd-boot support to bootctl. The bootctl command is now tasked with checking, updating, installing, or removing the boot loader from the current system. The bootctl utility now has new sub-commands of status, update, install, and remove for dealing with sd-boot as a boot loader.

This new (optional) sd-boot feature will be part of systemd 220 when released later this year.