ZFS support for EFI

[Rui Paulo]

Hi,

> On Mar 29, 2015, at 17:45, Eric McCorkle <eric at metricspace.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've been messing around off and on for a while with adding ZFS support
> to the EFI boot.  It's been mostly exploratory and self-contained up to
> this point, but I've gotten to a point that warrants some discussion.
> 
> 
> First, I've converted boot1.c (the EFI boot block) to use an FS module
> framework.  This facilitates the addition of ZFS, and should also come
> in handy if someone wants to add other functionality later (ie. crypto,
> netboot, etc.)

Good. :-)

> More importantly, the EFI loader doesn't seem to make use of its
> command-line arguments at all.  But a ZFS-enabled loader would really
> need the ability to take arguments from boot1 (or grub, or whatever
> else).  On the boot1 side, with ZFS you need to load and parse
> /boot/loader.conf (which may cause you to switch pools), then hand off
> the information to loader.  In the BIOS loader, that's done through a
> binary data object that gets passed in.  Command-line strings seem like
> the most sensible way to do it with EFI.
> 
> Would this be the right way to go, and if so, what ought these
> command-line strings look like?

I have a crazy idea: why not use getopt() in loader.efi ?  getopt() is already part of libstand, so it should be easy to use it.

Alternatively you can just use key value pairs.

--
Rui Paulo