On Wed, 2026-06-24 at 14:01 -0400, Jeremy Cline wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2026, at 9:40 AM, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 7:29 AM Gerd Hoffmann <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 06:48:23AM -0400, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 6:44 AM Timothée Ravier via devel
> > > > <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > This contradicts the main goal behind this package which is to
> > > > > include as few modules as possible to reduce the attack surface and
> > > > > thus the need for updates. When using UKIs, we only need support for
> > > > > the FAT filesystem that is used to store them in the ESP.
> > > 
> > > > But we don't *have* to store UKIs on the ESP, and we would prefer
> > > > *not* doing that.
> > > 
> > > Who is "we" and why do you *prefer* not doing that?
> > > 
> > 
> > I already said this upthread, David and I in Fedora Cloud. I'm not
> > going to say again why I don't want to.
> 
> 
> I feel obligated to chime in here and say that I (also in Fedora Cloud)
> very much do want UKIs, I do want them on the ESP and I do _not_ want
> the bootloader to have to care about more filesystems.

Amen,
the bootloader was a necessary evil back in the day because the BIOS
was not up to the task.

UEFI *is* up to the task and is actually in a much better position to
deal with the HW in some ways.

Forcing the use of a bootloader and then forcing the bootloader to have
a crapton of code to handle many filesystem is just backwards.

Sure you may need the *option* to go that way for some bad behaving
older hardware, but that should be the exception going forward not the
rule.

We have the chance to fundamentally simplify ( == less chances of odd
errors ) the boot process and make it more standard, and we absolutely
should do so.

> 
> > 
> > > There are a few cases where you have little choice, specifically if you
> > > have to work with an existing ESP which is too small to hold kernel
> > > images.
> > > 
> > > Pretty much any cloud use case (be it confidential or not) is not
> > > affected by size constrains because you generate disk images and can
> > > decide how big you make the ESP.  In my book that leaves no good reason
> > > to store the kernels elsewhere, other than backward compatibility to
> > > current practice.
> > > 
> > 
> > I wish you were right, but you are not. Cloud environments are
> > affected by buggy UEFI code just like everything else. These days AWS
> > isn't as problematic, but when we first experimented with it, AWS
> > instances booting UEFI couldn't even read FAT32 (it was required to be
> > FAT16) and they used to freak out over the protective MBR data. We
> > have encountered other virtualized environments that have similar problems
> > to real PC environments with ESP size, disk layout, binary names, and
> > so on.
> 
> If bugs are found we'll fix them. Bugs exist in all software and yet we 
> persist.

Raising the spectre of old bugs not to change the status quo is not
being "Fedora First" ...

Best,
Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Distinguished Engineer
RHEL Crypto Team
Red Hat, Inc

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