Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

clarify location of firmware for removable storage #113

Open
jto6 opened this issue Oct 20, 2023 · 1 comment
Open

clarify location of firmware for removable storage #113

jto6 opened this issue Oct 20, 2023 · 1 comment

Comments

@jto6
Copy link

jto6 commented Oct 20, 2023

Section 4.2.2 states that to make it easier to use stock OS images on
removable storage, firmware should be located on the ESP partition (so
you don't have to create a dedicated firmware partition).

On removable media, firmware should be stored in the ESP under the
/FIRMWARE directory structure as described in Firmware Partition
Filesystem.

However, prior in the 4.2 section, it states:

The sections below discuss the requirements when using both fixed and
removable storage. However, it should be noted that the recommended
behaviour of firmware should be identical regardless of storage type.
In both cases, the recommended boot sequence is to first search for
firmware in a dedicated firmware partition, and second search for
firmware in the ESP.

Why would the boot sequence for shared storage look in two places if it
is always in the ESP? Or does the statement in 4.2.2 only apply in the
case of using a stock OS image?

My suggestion is to reword the sentence in 4.2.2:

On removable media, firmware should be stored in the ESP ...

to

In either of the two scenarios above, firmware should be stored in the ESP ...

That way the spec isn't requiring that all removable storage store firmware in the ESP, but only for the cases mentioned to ease the modification of a stock OS image to boot.

@daniel-thompson
Copy link
Collaborator

daniel-thompson commented Oct 20, 2023

Why would the boot sequence for shared storage look in two places if it
is always in the ESP?

It is not always in the ESP (#include <rfc2119.h>, shall vs should, ;-) ).

I personally think the goal of 4.2.2 is to provide guidance when authoring images intended to be removable. It should not apply to cases where we are generating tailored OS images (meaning the install process is just a dd and we don't care if the image will be deployed to eMMC or SD card).

As such I thing the proposed wording is definitely an improvement.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

2 participants