On Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 09:10:45AM -0500, Jon Humphreys wrote:
Heinrich Schuchardt heinrich.schuchardt@canonical.com writes:
I personally would prefer firmware using the firmware folder in the ESP over using a firmware partition because the partitioning scheme would not be firmware specific.
I argue the opposite (again I'm new to this so open to learning!). My view: we want all the firmware bits to be owned and specific to the board and the board/firmware presents a standard API to the OS. The OS should own the ESP so it can modify it, set boot order, etc. For these reasons, you want the firmware location to be different than the ESP. For updateability, of course the firmware's location can't be unknown to the OS.
But my point in this is about where it comes from. The firmware must come from the board provider, and the ESP from the OS provider, so they must be in different locations.
As I type this, I realize I have 2 assumptions that may not be correct:
- the ESP should come from the OS provider. True? At least this seems
to be the common practice.
Pretty much.
On a system with multiple OSes they are something of a shared space between multiple OS providers. That means the OS providers try not to stand on each others toes! That means, in general, OS installers are designed to leave the ESP mostly as they found it (apart from installing their bootloaders).
However an installer typically won't do much to stop the user choosing to reformat or resizing the ESP since, on systems without firmware in the ESP, this is an entirely legitimate thing to do when entirely replacing one OS with another.
- the EBBR wants the OS to have direct access to the firmware for
updates. True? Or is the thinking that the OS should not have direct access but should only update via other mechanisms like capsule update?
Not as far as I remember. Capsules are the preferred update mechanism.
Daniel.