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(a)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(a)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.