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u-boot syslinux by default

Summary

Add syslinux support to u-boot enabling both pxelinux and extlinux support. simplifying booting arm machines, making anaconda installs easy and overall providing for a better user experience. Default u-boot to using syslinux config files for booting. pxelinux for network and extlinux for local booting. u-boot is the bootloader used on ARM systems in Fedora so the scope of this change is limited to ARM hardware only.

Owner

Current status

FESCo resolution:

Detailed Description

u-boot has support for booting using syslinux style configuration files, this change is to default to using it on all supported systems.

Benefit to Fedora

This takes away the complexity of booting arm systems. There is no need to know addresses or to wrap images with mkimage. Users will get a menu that allows them to choose which kernel to boot. making things like a boot.img will be possible. Initiating installs via anaconda will also be much more simple and straight forward.

Scope

  • Proposal owners: default u-boot to loading extlinux.conf files. anaconda to write a devicetreedir line in extlinux.conf on arm systems. appliance-creator to write out a devicetreedir in extlinux.conf on arm systems
  • Other developers: grubby to update extlinux.conf appropriately.
  • Release engineering: None
  • Policies and guidelines: None

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Existing booting via arm-boot-config should still work, so existing systems will work as before. longer term we will need to provide a simple way to create a extlinux.conf file and update u-boot for systems to migrate.

How To Test

Install u-boot onto an sdcard or update u-boot to a newer binary and use an image or run an anaconda install via a pxe tree

User Experience

Users will see a boot menu where they can select 1, 2, 3, etc fior the installed kernels.

Dependencies

Outside of my control is changes to grubby that I will work with the maintainer to ensure support is in for.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) make sure all supported boards work with arm-boot-config and use it as a fallback.
  • Contingency deadline: Alpha
  • Blocks release? No

Documentation

No documentation.

Release Notes