Supporting non-GRUB bootloaders?

Supporting non-GRUB bootloaders?

[Jookia]

Hi there,

I'm interested to know how hard it'd be to support a non-GRUB bootloader, such
as u-boot. On NixOS this is relatively easy, but I'm under the impression that
on Guix this is borderline impossible due to hard coding.

I'd like to do this:

* Copy initramfs and kernels to /boot.
* Write a extlinux.conf file for U-Boot to read.
* Not have GRUB installed or running.

How hard would this be? My motivation is that GRUB on ARM doesn't work on my
system (Novena) so the next best thing is to use U-Boot.

Thanks,
Jookia.

Re: Supporting non-GRUB bootloaders?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jookia <166291@gmail.com> skribis:

> I'm interested to know how hard it'd be to support a non-GRUB bootloader, such
> as u-boot. On NixOS this is relatively easy, but I'm under the impression that
> on Guix this is borderline impossible due to hard coding.

GuixSD currently pretty much assumes GRUB, because it’s the GNU
bootloader and, one would hope, it does the job.

That said, the (gnu system grub) module is less than 300 lines.  Then
there are also assumptions in (guix scripts system) and (gnu system).

> I'd like to do this:
>
> * Copy initramfs and kernels to /boot.
> * Write a extlinux.conf file for U-Boot to read.
> * Not have GRUB installed or running.
>
> How hard would this be?

You would need a module similar to (gnu system grub) for U-Boot and a
U-Boot package.  The you would need to abstract things in the
aforementioned modules.

> My motivation is that GRUB on ARM doesn't work on my system (Novena)

Too bad.  Would be nice to see exactly what’s missing.

> so the next best thing is to use U-Boot.

Yeah.

Apparently GRUB can also be used on top of U-Boot, FWIW:
<https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUBonUBOOT>.

So I would suggest that you get started and let us know when you
encounter specific stumbling blocks!

HTH,
Ludo’.