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Systemd Getting UEFI Boot Loader

New submitter mrons writes: Many new features are coming for systemd. This includes the ability to do a full secure boot. As Lennart Poettering mentions in a Google+ comment: "This is really just about providing the tools to implement the full trust chain from the firmware to the host OS, if SecureBoot is available. ... Of course, if you don't have EFI SecureBoot, than nothing changes. Also if you turn it off, than nothing changes either. [sic]" Phoronix notes, "Gummiboot is a simple UEFI boot manager that's been around for a few years but only receives new work from time-to-time. Lennart and Kay Sievers are looking at adding Gummiboot to systemd to complete the safety chain of the boot process with UEFI Secure Boot. Systemd will communicate with this UEFI boot loader to ensure the system didn't boot into a compromised state."

9 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. My FreeBSD Report: Four Months In by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just over four months ago, I updated my Debian testing workstation. To keep a long story short, systemd was installed, and my workstation basically got trashed. It no longer booted properly, and none of my attempts to fix it worked. I used a livecd to perform one final backup.

    I proceeded to install FreeBSD 10. In hindsight, I wish I had done this years ago. FreeBSD has worked almost perfectly for me. The installation was fast and actually quite simple. All of the open source software I used to use under Debian is available and easily installed. ZFS is amazing. My system feels faster than it ever did before. It has yet to crash even once, unlike Debian and Linux, where I'd get a kernel panic around once a month. The upgrade to FreeBSD 10.1 went very smoothly, with almost no effort on my part.

    I used to be disturbed by the recent degradation of the Debian project. But now I no longer care. Since moving to FreeBSD, I have no need for Debian. Debian is basically dead to me now. If it dies as a project, I don't care. FreeBSD does everything I need, and it does it better than Debian and Linux ever did.

    Good riddance, Debian. Good riddance, Linux. Good riddance, systemd. All of them are failures compared to FreeBSD.

    1. Re:My FreeBSD Report: Four Months In by donaldm · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just over four months ago, I updated my Debian testing workstation. To keep a long story short, systemd was installed, and my workstation basically got trashed. It no longer booted properly, and none of my attempts to fix it worked. I used a livecd to perform one final backup.

      Have you tried it on a stable OS release that has systemd? I assume you know that testing is a development branch and is supposed to break, otherwise it would be called stable. Fedora has been using it for years now and it has been fine.

      I concur, I have been using Fedora for quite a few years and have never had a problem with systemd. I unfortunately think our words are totally wasted on the haters though .

      --
      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
    2. Re:My FreeBSD Report: Four Months In by zdzichu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They are doing one thing, and doing it right. They are providing much needed middleware and useful APIs, unifying Linux' Balkans.
      GRUB2 isn't the UEFI bootloader. It does much more, mainly in order to boot on legacy BIOS systems. I find gummiboot much better, I've been using it for years.

      --
      :wq
    3. Re:My FreeBSD Report: Four Months In by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Have you tried it on a stable OS release that has systemd?

      You mean like Fedora/RH which has 4 'urgent' severity bugs with systemd

      Including one where systemd breaks Keyboard shortcuts handling in text virtual consoles on Redhat Enterprise Linux.

      If you lower the bar to "high" priority you get some fun ones like:

      Unable to boot when systemd's LogTarget is set to syslog-or-kmsg or syslog on RHEL7. (The devs left it at "Ok, dropping log messages even just from systemd itself isn't probaly a best way, but wee need more time for investigation." in September 2014).

      reboot or shutdown commands unresponsive during systemd-fsck

      systemd stuck when auto-mouting volume for NFS

      Systemd doesn't unmount all devices before calling reboot/halt and thus corrupts a clean RAID1

      These aren't "oops, I can't play MP3" level bugs.

  2. So what are people moving to ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    After the systemd fiasco what are people moving to mostly?

  3. Re:You're joking, right? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    3-4 naysayers? More like the majority of the linux community.

    There's this thing called "The Fox News Bubble"

    You're in a Linux version of that. Would you please just switch to FreeBSD so all your problems will go away?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. Re:You're joking, right? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hey, FUCK YOU, and fuck anyone else whose solution is 'if you don't like it then go elsewhere.' Talk about the Fox News bubble, I'm sure you tell non-patriotic people to get the fuck out of the country too.

    Wow. Thank you for proving my point.

    Ya see, We have options. If I don't like Chevrolet ( the favorite of fake patriots, despite a French name) I am able to ...... get this......

    Wait for it....

    Get a different fucking vehicle.

    Choice! Go to BSD if you like. Fork a linux distro that contains no systemd. Do something. The anti systemd people promote themselves as the zenith of expertise, Seems like thy should lead the charge to a brave new system free world. They know how bad it is, they need to do something about it.

    But if all you are going to do is come in here and bawl like a baby or politician that needs their nappy changed, well, you are going to have to expect some reaction.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  5. Re:So, UEFI is a good thing now? by Wyzard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First of all, UEFI is more than Secure Boot. UEFI has been standard on PCs for the past few years, and on Macs ever since they switched to x86. Secure Boot is just a feature of some newer UEFI implementations.

    Second, Secure Boot is a legitimate security feature that helps to protect against boot-time malware. There's nothing inherently evil about it. The controversy is over who should have the power to decide which OS is considered trustworthy and allowed to boot: the owner of the computer, or the vendor of the OS that came preinstalled on the computer?

    Naturally, you don't want to buy a computer that doesn't let you choose which OS you trust. But if you have a computer that does give you that choice, why not take advantage of it? Seems to me that it's good to have hardware vendors see increased demand for machines that support securely booting the OS of your choice, as opposed to those where you just have to disable Secure Boot entirely if you want to run something other than Windows.

  6. Re:I foresee... by rl117 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Really? I can.

    I'm a Debian developer who has been moving slowly to using FreeBSD on more and more systems over the last year, displacing Debian use and development on those systems. I've started contributing in minor ways on the lists and the odd patch for the ports tree. I'll likely start packaging my stuff in ports and becoming increasingly more involved over time.

    I contribute to things I'm actively using. For the past 15 years, that was Debian. Unfortunately due to the best efforts of the systemd people, it looks like that's unlikely to continue, though I very much wish this was not the case. But reality can't be avoided, and this is where things are today.