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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/efi-stub.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/efi-stub.txt | 33 |
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/efi-stub.txt b/Documentation/efi-stub.txt index c628788d5b4..7747024d3bb 100644 --- a/Documentation/efi-stub.txt +++ b/Documentation/efi-stub.txt @@ -1,13 +1,21 @@ The EFI Boot Stub --------------------------- -On the x86 platform, a bzImage can masquerade as a PE/COFF image, -thereby convincing EFI firmware loaders to load it as an EFI -executable. The code that modifies the bzImage header, along with the -EFI-specific entry point that the firmware loader jumps to are -collectively known as the "EFI boot stub", and live in +On the x86 and ARM platforms, a kernel zImage/bzImage can masquerade +as a PE/COFF image, thereby convincing EFI firmware loaders to load +it as an EFI executable. The code that modifies the bzImage header, +along with the EFI-specific entry point that the firmware loader +jumps to are collectively known as the "EFI boot stub", and live in arch/x86/boot/header.S and arch/x86/boot/compressed/eboot.c, -respectively. +respectively. For ARM the EFI stub is implemented in +arch/arm/boot/compressed/efi-header.S and +arch/arm/boot/compressed/efi-stub.c. EFI stub code that is shared +between architectures is in drivers/firmware/efi/efi-stub-helper.c. + +For arm64, there is no compressed kernel support, so the Image itself +masquerades as a PE/COFF image and the EFI stub is linked into the +kernel. The arm64 EFI stub lives in arch/arm64/kernel/efi-entry.S +and arch/arm64/kernel/efi-stub.c. By using the EFI boot stub it's possible to boot a Linux kernel without the use of a conventional EFI boot loader, such as grub or @@ -23,7 +31,10 @@ The bzImage located in arch/x86/boot/bzImage must be copied to the EFI System Partition (ESP) and renamed with the extension ".efi". Without the extension the EFI firmware loader will refuse to execute it. It's not possible to execute bzImage.efi from the usual Linux file systems -because EFI firmware doesn't have support for them. +because EFI firmware doesn't have support for them. For ARM the +arch/arm/boot/zImage should be copied to the system partition, and it +may not need to be renamed. Similarly for arm64, arch/arm64/boot/Image +should be copied but not necessarily renamed. **** Passing kernel parameters from the EFI shell @@ -63,3 +74,11 @@ Notice how bzImage.efi can be specified with a relative path. That's because the image we're executing is interpreted by the EFI shell, which understands relative paths, whereas the rest of the command line is passed to bzImage.efi. + + +**** The "dtb=" option + +For the ARM and arm64 architectures, we also need to be able to provide a +device tree to the kernel. This is done with the "dtb=" command line option, +and is processed in the same manner as the "initrd=" option that is +described above. |