0153-uefi-only: init

rfcs/0153-uefi-only.md

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+---
+feature: non_legacy_boot
+start-date: 2023-06-16
+author: Ryan Lahfa
+co-authors: (find a buddy later to help out with the RFC)
+shepherd-team: (names, to be nominated and accepted by RFC steering committee)
+shepherd-leader: (name to be appointed by RFC steering committee)
+related-issues: (will contain links to implementation PRs)
+---
+
+# Summary
+[summary]: #summary
+
+NixOS will have first-class support for UEFI
+and uses it as a default boot environment, for supported architectures,
+even in situations where only BIOS Boot Specification's legacy boot is available,
+via a dual-stage payload consisting of a polyfill bootloader/firmware and a standard
+UEFI bootloader.
+
+To achieve this, it will downgrade the GRUB privileged position
+in the project and offer it as a "best effort" basis alternative bootloader.
+
+# Motivation
+[motivation]: #motivation
+
+Legacy boot is defined by the BIOS Boot specification, written in 1996: https://www.scs.stanford.edu/nyu/04fa/lab/specsbbs101.pdf.
+Nowadays, computers are defaulting to UEFI more and more for the extended features provided (e.g. SecureBoot, native network boot, etc.).
+
+Nevertheless, many legacy boots machines or machines that does not have support for UEFI are used with NixOS: Single Board Computers for example
+on other architectures.
+
+Let's put aside non-legacy boot payloads such as [Linuxboot](https://www.linuxboot.org/), [Ownerboot](https://sr.ht/~amjoseph/ownerboot/) and any similar payloads,
+those are not legacy and they definitely have their places in the project, though, at the time of writing, no such payload is offered in NixOS.
+
+In nixpkgs, legacy boot forces a dichotomy between `boot.loader.efi` and... at least two legacy bootloaders **in tree**: GRUB and a family of UBoot/extlinux-compatible/etc.
+
+In the case of GRUB, there are increasing problems with this bootloader:
+
+- Upstream do not do releases anymore: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-unstable/pkgs/tools/misc/grub/default.nix#L62-L350
+- Co-maintenance / release work with other ecosystems such as the kernel is simply not done: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-unstable/pkgs/tools/misc/grub/default.nix#L345-L349 causing GRUB's drivers to explode in production for our users: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/235222
+- Our own maintenance of GRUB is subpar: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/227741 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/226821 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/195805 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/95901 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/236027
+- GRUB installation procedure uses `install-grub.pl`, one of the remaining Perl script: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/95901#issuecomment-756702696 offered to rewrite it with sponsoring, but no one took the offer yet, it is also very complicated to integrate with it: https://github.com/nix-community/lanzaboote/pull/96
+- GRUB installation procedure for UEFI-only is still confusing because our scripts does not handle well UEFI-only (you have to pass `nodev` and this is not very well documented). See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/222491
+
+The worse about this, is this is our **default** bootloader for our install images **because** of legacy boot.
+
+In the case of UBoot/extlinux-compatible/etc. : we should definitely keep it, polish it and improve it for a better support of embedded systems, e.g. merging the differences
+between Raspberry Pi's bootloader and extlinux-compatible's ones.
+
+Getting rid of legacy boot opens up the way to get rid of GRUB as a default and offering an UEFI environment opens up the way to:
+
+- having a default ISO booting systemd-boot which is a maintained (by systemd) bootloader with active releases, smaller code footprint, maintained also by Systemd team in Nixpkgs
+- Features like https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/84204 could also be enabled for legacy boot users
+- Users who wants to use GRUB drivers to mount non-standard ESP can make use of https://efi.akeo.ie/ which is compatible with any UEFI bootloader
+- Boot testing can split into 2 ways: legacy boot compatibility layer tests and UEFI boot tests
+- Successful adoption gives a positive signal to others distribution to consider it, provide development resources to improve it rather than being held by the existing things, etc.
+
+# Detailed design
+[design]: #detailed-design
+
+Currently, most x86 computers^[For a more complete reference, read: https://safeboot.dev/chain-of-trust/] boot in a similar way to this **on a very high level** :
+
+```mermaid
+flowchart
+    subgraph Firmware
+    A((Power On)) --->|boots Intel Management Engine| M
+    M((Intel Management Engine)) ---->|starts x86 CPU| C((x86 CPU))
+    C -->|starts OEM payload: BIOS or UEFI| O((BIOS or UEFI))
+    end
+    subgraph Distribution
+    O -->|boot further bootloaders| BL((GRUB or systemd-boot))
+    BL -->|boot operating system| OS((NixOS))
+    end
+```
+
+In other platforms, you can see extra payloads like <https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware> or <https://github.com/riscv-software-src/opensbi>
+before the distribution part, sometimes, it can be part of the distribution if control can be exerted.
+
+Some machines does even have control on the OEM payload or a good subset of the firmware, for example, via <https://www.coreboot.org/> or
+<https://github.com/oreboot/oreboot>.
+
+The idea is to transform this flowchart into:
+
+```mermaid
+flowchart
+    subgraph Firmware
+    A((Power On)) --->|boots Intel Management Engine| M
+    M((Intel Management Engine)) ---->|starts x86 CPU| C((x86 CPU))
+    C -->|starts OEM payload: BIOS| O((BIOS))
+    end
+    subgraph Distribution
+    O -->|boot UEFI environment| UB((U-Boot))
+    UB -->|boot further bootloaders| BL((any UEFI-enabled bootloader))
+    BL -->|boot operating system| OS((NixOS))
+    end
+```
+
+and keep it the old way whenever the OEM payload is UEFI already.
+
+If we take a step back, we can notice this 2-stage payload boot story can be generalized in those situations:
+
+```mermaid
+flowchart
+    subgraph Firmware
+    A((Power On)) --->|boots some evil chip| M
+    M((Evil Chip 2000)) ---->|starts some architecture CPU| C(($arch CPU))
+    end
+    subgraph Distribution
+    C -->|starts user-provided firmware| CBL((coreboot))
+    CBL -->|starts user-provided payload| O((TianoCore, LinuxBoot, OwnerBoot, etc.))
+    O -->|boot Linux operating system| OS((U-Boot))
+    end
+```
+
+In this situation, (c)oreboot could be a replacement of U-Boot environment and any UEFI-enabled bootloader could be replaced by any payload.
+
+Therefore, the design has to be general enough to support both usecases.
+
+# Examples and Interactions
+[examples-and-interactions]: #examples-and-interactions
+
+Fedora is considering doing this: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/GOETDM5SWINBX5ZDV37SWMHIPRRUVVTT/.
+
+Asahi Linux is booting UEFI via UBoot without EFI variables and it has been great for them.
+
+People who want to boot off strange partitions at boot-time can exploit UEFI drivers capability to load any filesystem driver and
+open the EFI System Partition in ZFS if they really insist.
+
+# Drawbacks
+[drawbacks]: #drawbacks
+
+- 2-stage boot for legacy BIOS systems is more than 1-stage boot
+- Increased internal complexity in the boot story of NixOS
+- Increased load and reliance on UBoot
+- The runtime service `SetVariable` will probably stay highly unstable for a while (variable storage)
+
+# Alternatives
+[alternatives]: #alternatives
+
+- Keeping legacy BIOS and hoping someday it will be a bit more maintained
+- Getting rid of legacy BIOS without other options
+
+Then, if we don't do this, we will continue to have users relying on bootloaders with shady maintenance stories and a skewed perception of what a bootloader can do (e.g. boot on a ZFS partition?).
+
+# Unresolved questions
+[unresolved]: #unresolved-questions
+
+- How to migrate existing installs without any GPT partition table?
+- How to migrate existing installs with a GPT partition table but without a supported EFI System Partition, e.g. LVM
+  - NTFS, XFS, exFAT, Amiga FFS/SFS, BFS, UFS, ZFS are handled via https://efi.akeo.ie/ which is an EFI driver that can be loaded
+  - Subquestion: how to load EFI drivers for unsupported EFI System Partition?
+    - Answer: Build EDK2 or UBoot with https://github.com/pbatard/efifs them.
+- When to do it?
+- What to do about variable storage (Asahi Linux showed this is not that important for a start)?
+- Design architecture in nixpkgs?
+
+# Future work
+[future]: #future-work
+
+- Improved support for UEFI features on non-UEFI native systems