grub2/grub-core/osdep
Colin Watson 3b015f7892 Minimise writes to EFI variable storage
Some UEFI firmware is easily provoked into running out of space in its
variable storage.  This is usually due to certain kernel drivers (e.g.
pstore), but regardless of the cause it can cause grub-install to fail
because it currently asks efibootmgr to delete and re-add entries, and
the deletion often doesn't result in an immediate garbage collection.
Writing variables frequently also increases wear on the NVRAM which may
have limited write cycles.  For these reasons, it's desirable to find a
way to minimise writes while still allowing grub-install to ensure that
a suitable boot entry exists.

Unfortunately, efibootmgr doesn't offer an interface that would let
grub-install do this.  It doesn't in general make very much effort to
minimise writes; it doesn't allow modifying an existing Boot* variable
entry, except in certain limited ways; and current versions don't have a
way to export the expected variable data so that grub-install can
compare it to the current data.  While it would be possible (and perhaps
desirable?) to add at least some of this to efibootmgr, that would still
leave the problem that there isn't a good upstreamable way for
grub-install to guarantee that it has a new enough version of
efibootmgr.  In any case, it's cumbersome and slow for grub-install to
have to fork efibootmgr to get things done.

Fortunately, a few years ago Peter Jones helpfully factored out a
substantial part of efibootmgr to the efivar and efiboot libraries, and
so it's now possible to have grub-install use those directly.  We still
have to use some code from efibootmgr, but much less than would
previously have been necessary.

grub-install now reuses existing boot entries where possible, and avoids
writing to variables when the new contents are the same as the old
contents.  In the common upgrade case where nothing needs to change, it
no longer writes to NVRAM at all.  It's also now slightly faster, since
using libefivar is faster than forking efibootmgr.

Fixes Debian bug #891434.

Signed-off-by: Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com>

Bug-Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/891434
Forwarded: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2019-03/msg00119.html
Last-Update: 2019-03-23

Patch-Name: efi-variable-storage-minimise-writes.patch
2021-09-25 00:37:54 +01:00
..
apple Make newly-created files other than grub.cfg world-readable. 2013-12-24 17:36:10 +01:00
aros misc: Make grub_strtol() "end" pointers have safer const qualifiers 2020-02-28 12:41:29 +01:00
basic Port yaboot logic for various powerpc machine types 2021-09-25 00:37:38 +01:00
bsd Make newly-created files other than grub.cfg world-readable. 2013-12-24 17:36:10 +01:00
devmapper misc: Make grub_strtol() "end" pointers have safer const qualifiers 2020-02-28 12:41:29 +01:00
freebsd osdep/freebsd: Fix partition calculation for EBR entries 2019-03-05 10:21:54 +01:00
generic verifiers: Blocklist fallout cleanup 2019-07-11 18:06:23 +02:00
haiku haiku/getroot.c (grub_util_find_partition_start_os): Avoid division by zero. 2015-01-21 17:42:15 +01:00
hurd Clarify several translatable messages. 2013-12-21 01:41:16 +01:00
linux Port yaboot logic for various powerpc machine types 2021-09-25 00:37:38 +01:00
sun Move stat () and device mode checking into OS-dependent files as 2013-10-19 16:29:20 +02:00
unix Minimise writes to EFI variable storage 2021-09-25 00:37:54 +01:00
windows Port yaboot logic for various powerpc machine types 2021-09-25 00:37:38 +01:00
blocklist.c Split out blocklist retrieving from setup.c to 2013-10-15 17:02:26 +02:00
compress.c Rewrite grub-install, grub-mkrescue, grub-mkstandalone and grub-mknetdir 2013-11-16 20:21:16 +01:00
config.c Rewrite grub-install, grub-mkrescue, grub-mkstandalone and grub-mknetdir 2013-11-16 20:21:16 +01:00
cputime.c Move cpu time retrieval to separate grub_util_get_cpu_time_ms 2013-10-15 13:13:53 +02:00
dl.c Move OS-dependent mprotect for module loading to grub-core/osdep/*/dl.c 2013-12-08 18:08:23 +01:00
efivar.c Minimise writes to EFI variable storage 2019-03-23 00:38:45 +00:00
emuconsole.c * grub-core/osdep/windows/emuconsole.c: New file. 2013-10-14 21:33:55 +02:00
emunet.c * grub-core/net/drivers/emu/emunet.c: Move to .. 2013-10-08 18:42:46 +02:00
exec.c * grub-core/osdep/exec.c: Use unix version on cygwin. 2013-12-14 21:39:03 +01:00
getroot.c Add haiku-specific functions. 2013-10-19 16:39:38 +02:00
hostdisk.c Add haiku-specific functions. 2013-10-19 16:39:38 +02:00
init.c Move set_program_name and init_nls to host_init. On windows 2013-10-13 20:03:42 +02:00
ofpath.c * util/ieee1275/ofpath.c: Move to ... 2013-10-08 18:25:49 +02:00
password.c Move password-querying (util-version) routines to grub-core/osdep. 2013-10-08 17:51:39 +02:00
platform_unix.c Rewrite grub-install, grub-mkrescue, grub-mkstandalone and grub-mknetdir 2013-11-16 20:21:16 +01:00
platform.c Implement windows flavour of EFI install routines. 2013-12-14 23:35:58 +01:00
random.c * grub-core/osdep/random.c: Use unix/random.c on haiku. Haiku uses 2013-10-19 02:30:05 +02:00
relpath.c Split make_system_path_relative_to_its_root into separate file 2013-10-19 16:21:08 +02:00
sleep.c Move sleep routines to grub-core/osdep. 2013-10-08 17:38:46 +02:00