Hi Peter and Quentin, On 10/3/2026 11:05 AM, Peter Robinson wrote: > Hi Quentin, > >>> +CONFIG_USE_PREBOOT=y >>> +CONFIG_PREBOOT="pci enum; usb start; nvme scan;" >> >> I know Jonas has been pretty vocal against having PREBOOT set by default >> as it drastically increases the boot time in all scenarios.
Correct, this is my main review remark of this series. >> We don't >> have many Rockchip boards that set this variable, do you really need it? >> Shouldn't bootflow set this up properly when attempting to use >> PCI/USB/NVMe storage to locate files? > > I patch all of the Fedora builds to enable preboot so yes, I think we > really do need it and it should be on all boards. Bootflow doesn't set > this up by default, and if it does would it not increase boot time in > similar ways? To my knowledge there used to be an issue with efi_mgr being loaded too early, before 'bootflow scan' had enumerated possible storage devices. However this should have been solved in v2026.01 when efi_mgr got a new priority and now is tested just before network devices are scanned. Was this change not enough or is there some other reason to need storage enumeration in PREBOOT? U-Boot is primarily designed to lazy/on-demand load devices, so any use of PREBOOT to circumvent this is sounds like a workaround for some underlying bug/issue that should be tracked down and fixed. > > Ultimately these sort of things are always a compromise, for the > defaults what would most users prefer, a system that just works with > whatever storage they use, or a boot that saves a few seconds. From a > Fedora, and likely most other distros are similar, I would prefer a > system that works as it means a *LOT* less support tickets/complaints. > Users that care about a few extra seconds of boot likely are doing > other custom things as part of the process and likely are changing > other things in the build config anyway so disabling the storage they > don't want to boot from likely isn't a big step. Please enlighten me what issues the PREBOOT workaround fixes, so that a proper fix can be worked on. And if we truly need a PREBOOT workaround I expect that 'bootflow scan -G' or similar should be enough? The issues I know of that PREBOOT have been used help solve are: - EFI not finding all storage devices, should work since v2026.01? - Custom boot-scripts not doing device enumeration themself. - Use of VIDEO and USB_KEYBOARD to stop autoboot. Are there some other use-cases/issue I do not know about? Regards, Jonas > > Peter
