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On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 12:37:56AM -0500, Joseph Taylor wrote:
> >2. grub suck at booting xen.efi (or rather: xen.efi is rather picky
> > about its environment). On many systems, booting xen.efi without grub
> > (using rEFInd, EFI shell, or simply by renaming it over BOOTX64.efi)
> > helps with boot problems. An idea: do not use grub on UEFI installation.
> > Downside: you loose boot menu - no way to choose or not media
> > verification, or rescue mode. And no way to adjust boot arguments,
> > needed on some platforms to workaround UEFI bugs... To do that, you'd
> > need to edit EFI/BOOT/xen.cfg using some other means.
> > Alternative: keep grub there, but provide an instruction how to boot
> > xen.efi directly, in short:
> >
> > mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt # assuming /dev/sdb1 is installation USB
> > mv /mnt/EFI/BOOT/xen.efi /mnt/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi
> > mv /mnt/EFI/BOOT/xen.cfg /mnt/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.cfg
> > umount /mnt
> >
> > After such operation, media verification would fail, obviously.
> 
> You could offer this as an installation option, either by booting the
> installer using EFI directly (the installer itself doesn't need a boot
> menu, if needed you could just automatically run media verification
> with a skip prompt instead of making it a boot option), or by offering
> 2 versions of the installer image, one with GRUB and one that
> configures the system for direct booting.

Two versions would be a mess, especially when there will be such subtle
difference. A lot of people will have hard time figuring which one is
the correct for them (in most cases: any, but still, you need to make a
choice). And at the same time, it will require more testing on our side
(two images instead of one), use more space on mirrors etc.

But there is another option: get rid of the grub, boot installer
directly, but enable known UEFI workarounds by default (dropping grub is
one of them ;) ). This should be the most convenient for most users,
even those having buggy UEFI. The missing thing will be "rescue mode", but
it is still possible to use installer for that - you just need to switch
to the second console (alt-ctrl-f2) instead following installer
instructions.

And if that still isn't enough for some machine, there are still old
workarounds available - including using rEFInd or modifying image as
described above (both kernel and xen options). Or booting in legacy
mode, where you have menu to modify boot options.

- -- 
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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