Loading kernel image with GRUB via ski-efi

[johnny-mnemonic]

I think it might be best to handle that in an issue.

@phcoder :
So I tried the recent ski-efi addition with a GRUB image made natively (as per the README) from EPIC Slack's a/grub (2.12 based, sources).

ski-efi was made like so:

/usr/src/ski/ski-efi# time make CROSS_COMPILE=ia64-linux-
ia64-linux-gcc -nostdinc -Iinclude -mconstant-gp -Wa,-gdwarf-2   -c -o boot_head.o boot_head.S
ia64-linux-gcc -nostdinc -Iinclude -ffixed-r13 -mfixed-range=f12-f15,f32-f127 -mconstant-gp -g -falign-functions=32 -frename-registers -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -fno-builtin   -c -o bootloader.o bootloader.c
ia64-linux-gcc -nostdinc -Iinclude -ffixed-r13 -mfixed-range=f12-f15,f32-f127 -mconstant-gp -g -falign-functions=32 -frename-registers -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -fno-builtin   -c -o fw-emu.o fw-emu.c
ia64-linux-gcc -nostdinc -Iinclude -ffixed-r13 -mfixed-range=f12-f15,f32-f127 -mconstant-gp -g -falign-functions=32 -frename-registers -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -fno-builtin   -c -o memstr.o memstr.c
ia64-linux-ld boot_head.o bootloader.o fw-emu.o memstr.o -o ski-efi -static -T bootloader.lds
ia64-linux-ld: warning: ski-efi has a LOAD segment with RWX permissions

real	0m1.464s
user	0m0.102s
sys	0m0.050s
/usr/src/ski/ski-efi# echo $?
0

But unfortunately I can't get it to work yet, neither with @trofi 's unpacked vmlinux from https://slyfox.uni.cx/ia64/, nor with a recent v6.15-rc1 kernel image for Ski (which works with the ski-bootloader):

# bski -noconsole ./ski-efi ./grub.efi ./vmlinux
loading ./grub.efi...
starting kernel...
Unsupported open_protocol
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
# echo $?
128

# bski -noconsole ./ski-efi ./grub.efi /boot/vmlinux-6.15.0-rc1-082b1ff1562a-ia64-ski-00073-g082b1ff1562a root=/dev/sda simscsi=./sd simeth=enp1s0f0 init=/init PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin rw
loading ./grub.efi...
starting kernel...
Unsupported open_protocol
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
# echo $?
128

Do I maybe need a more recent (unreleased) GRUB version for this to work?

[phcoder]

Yes, you need 2 patches:

• https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250407190549.2241164-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u
• https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250410104545.3758686-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u

[johnny-mnemonic]

Yes, you need 2 patches:

* https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250407190549.2241164-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u

* https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250410104545.3758686-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u

Thanks!

Couldn't work on that until today, as I needed to find a solution for the mainline breakage on all zx1 and zx2 based systems.

So finally today I recreated the a/grub package for ia64 with those two patches included (the second one needed a modification, because the 2.12 sources seem to have '-Wl,-r' instead of '-shared' for ia64_efi_ldflags - not sure if that is important) and also created and added a standalone image to the package, so users can just get one from the EPIC Slack GRUB package if need be.

I haven't yet uploaded the new GRUB package, but it's based on the Slackware sources, with the two patches added to the sources and the grub.SlackBuild script patched with pkg.patch.

I made sure to build it two times and also installed the created package before building it the second time, just in case, the ./usr/bin/grub-mkstandalone [...] -O ia64-efi command done during the build would use the system's GRUB modules instead of the just created ones.

Unfortunately using that new standalone image still yields the same messages for me:

# bski -noconsole ./ski-efi ./grub-ia64-standalone.efi /boot/vmlinux-6.15.0-rc1-c1fddbbee142-ia64-ski-2-00073-gc1fddbbee142
loading ./grub-ia64-standalone.efi...
starting kernel...
Unsupported open_protocol
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.

No idea, what the issue is here then still. I also don't see anything obvious in the GRUB patches Slackware carries. Or could 0198-align-struct-efi_variable-better.patch make a problem for us?

[phcoder]

Yes, you need 2 patches:

* https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250407190549.2241164-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u

* https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20250410104545.3758686-1-phcoder@gmail.com/T/#u

Thanks!

Couldn't work on that until today, as I needed to find a solution for the mainline breakage on all zx1 and zx2 based systems.

So finally today I recreated the a/grub package for ia64 with those two patches included (the second one needed a modification, because the 2.12 sources seem to have '-Wl,-r' instead of '-shared' for ia64_efi_ldflags - not sure if that is important) and also created and added a standalone image to the package, so users can just get one from the EPIC Slack GRUB package if need be.

I haven't yet uploaded the new GRUB package, but it's based on the Slackware sources, with the two patches added to the sources and the grub.SlackBuild script patched with pkg.patch.

I made sure to build it two times and also installed the created package before building it the second time, just in case, the ./usr/bin/grub-mkstandalone [...] -O ia64-efi command done during the build would use the system's GRUB modules instead of the just created ones.

Unfortunately using that new standalone image still yields the same messages for me:

# bski -noconsole ./ski-efi ./grub-ia64-standalone.efi /boot/vmlinux-6.15.0-rc1-c1fddbbee142-ia64-ski-2-00073-gc1fddbbee142
loading ./grub-ia64-standalone.efi...
starting kernel...
Unsupported open_protocol
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.
Could not malloc memory to remember EFI allocation. Exiting GRUB won't free all memory.

No idea, what the issue is here then still. I also don't see anything obvious in the GRUB patches Slackware carries. Or could 0198-align-struct-efi_variable-better.patch make a problem for us?

I downloaded the same sources, applied slackware patches, applied 2 my patches from your URL, run ./autogen.sh, touch grub-core/extra_deps.lst, then ./configure --target=ia64-linux-gnu && make -j22 and ./grub-mkstandalone -d grub-core/ -o grub.efi -O ia64-efi ~/ia64ski/linux-4.19.241/vmlinux . I could boot.
Did you do ./autogen.sh ? Do you have instant messaging? Can you drop your contacts to my email?