Re: GRUB 2.12 release, etc.

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2022 at 15:01, Daniel Kiper <daniel.kiper@oracle.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Adding Ard, Atish, Fu, Heinrich, Leif and Nikita...
>
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 05:48:39PM +0800, Xiaotian Wu wrote:
> > Hi Daniel.
> >
> > Thank you for your release plan.
> >
> > I would like to ask, can GRUB-2.12 add a new LoongArch architecture support?
>
> Sure, I will start reviewing them in the following weeks...
>
> > LoongArch is a RISC instruction set from China. Currently, Linux-5.19 adds
> > LoongArch CPU support and will support complete EFIStub in version 5.20.
> >
> > On GRUB, including 2 patch sets:
> >
> > 1. Add the basic support of LoongArch so that GRUB can run on the LoongArch
> > machine. See https://github.com/loongarch64/grub/tree/dev/patchwork/base
> >

Can we get rid of the magic number check at the same time? I noticed
this is still in the arm64 code as well, but for pure PE/COFF EFI
boot, there is really no point in checking the image for magic numbers
- we are doing essentially the same as a chainload, and we could boot
arbitrary PE/COFF binaries from GRUB if we wanted to.

> > 2. Add the loader for kernel, but it depends on a series of patch of
> > Loadfile2. See https://github.com/loongarch64/grub/tree/dev/patchwork/efi
>
> Oh, LoadFile2, I think it would be nice if somebody revives this patch
> series [1], [2]. I sent my comments a few months ago and nothing happened.
> Nikita or anybody else, could you take my comments into account and post v4?
>
> > These patchs are already available, and tested on CLFS and Archlinux for
> > LoongArch.
> >
> > If we plan to support LoongArch in GRUB-2.12, I will update these patchs and
> > release the 4th version of the patch for review.
>
> If you could rebase them on latest master that would be perfect.
>

Please cc me when sending out the patches, and I will take time to
review the pieces that are specific to EFI and Linux.

Thanks,
Ard.