Subject: [bug#48314] Patches to install guix system on Raspberry Pi

From: Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 10:21:35 -0700

On 2022-07-17, Stefan wrote:
>>> +(define-public %u-boot-rpi-efi-configs
>>> +  '("CONFIG_OF_EMBED="
>>> +    "CONFIG_OF_BOARD=y"
>>> +    "CONFIG_BOOTDELAY=0"))
>> 
>> This is surely a matter of opinion, but CONFIG_BOOTDELAY=0 is kind of
>> nasty; it makes it nearly impossible to debug from a u-boot prompt if
>> needed. The default is probably "2" ... long enough to actually
>> interrupt it, but short enough that it shouldn't cause huge delays in
>> the boot process...
>> 
>> I know grub-efi will add it's own delay, so in a working environment,
>> this just seems like an additional two seconds, but u-boot's EFI
>> implementation is changing often enough that I wouldn't be surprised if
>> you need to occasionally debug something.
>
> During all the months of work to get Guix System booting over network
> with U-Boot and GRUB, there was no need for me to play around on the
> U-Boot prompt.
...
> Well, in this constellation U-Boot just needs to find and load the
> efi/boot/bootaa64.efi file. It doesn’t need to load device-tree files
> or care for overlays. It doesn’t need to load other stuff like SPL or
> other images. Its only purpose is to impose an EFI interface and to
> load GRUB. So the benefit of the U-Boot prompt is quite limited.

So if it does not find that one file, what do you do?

> Also other distributions like openSUSE use U-Boot as EFI firmware, so
> I think the basic EFI functionality is tested quite well.

Sure, it has improved greatly.

> My preference is to not bother pure users with a delayed boot
> time. However, I changed it to CONFIG_BOOTDELAY=1.

Well, from my perspective, this is obviously significantly less bad that
0 seconds...

In general, it is my understanding that Guix prefers to go with upstream
defaults, unless there is a strong argument otherwise. I do not
personally see this as warranting a difference from upstream defaults to
gain 1 or 2 seconds of boot time.

live well,
  vagrant