Kernel Support for EFI Stub Loader

1st Official Post

    Would adding EFI stub loader support to the Linux kernel be something that you guys can do? It eliminates the need to create *.efi files. My bootloader scans and finds most distros via the kernel with no issue, but I can't get it to work with LibreELEC.

    Oh, really? I should have specified but I was in fact referring to the generic build. I thought it would have caught the kernel in the bootloader’s scan, but maybe not in the kernel’s native locale.

    I am manually reinstalling LibreELEC, because of course the installer isn't happy with my FAT EFI partition. I'm just getting into the trenches on this stuff, but I believe that the standard LibreELEC install is legacy boot. I just wiped my Intel NUC and changed the Visual BIOS settings to UEFI.

    I have Ubuntu 18.04 also, and my bootloader has two entries for it - one for the efi file and one for the kernel.

    I read somewhere that I may need to place a copy of the kernel on the EFI partition, but that it still needs to know where to point for the actual installation...(FYI, using a large drive - EFI is /dev/sda1, LE system /dev/sda2, LE storage /dev/sda3, empty ext4 /dev/sda4, Ubuntu /dev/sda5)

    It will only boot to Ubuntu, with the SYSTEM and KERNEL files from the 8.2.5 tarball in the LE system partition.

    I’ve actually spent, conservatively speaking, 20 or more hours trying to get all this set up right - mostly for learning purposes.

    I installed LE as close to the front of the disk as possible because I know it likes to own the disk, but my media is external and LE doesn't need 1TB.

    Any ideas?

    • Official Post

    LE installation simply creates two partitions; 512MB and 100% of remaining space. We install the syslinux bootloader with a conf file but we don't actually care which bootloader is used, so if you prefer grub (or grub is the only one that works on your box) go use it. Ubuntu uses grub so that might be a good idea. You simply need to set boot= and disk= in boot params to indicate which partition contains the KERNEL and SYSTEM files, and which one should be used as /storage.