NAME

bootloader — how an installed rawnix system boots, and checking it

DESCRIPTION

An installed rawnix system boots with Limine from the EFI system partition, mounted at /boot/efi. The kernel and the initramfs, tinyrd.img, are also kept there.

Nothing installs a boot loader by hand. The limine package puts Limine on the EFI system partition at EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI, the fallback path every UEFI firmware looks at. limine-sync writes the menu, limine.conf, from the kernels in /boot and the command line in /etc/limine-sync.conf. It runs by itself whenever a kernel is installed or removed.

This is why the order in installation(7) matters: setup-boot(8) writes /etc/limine-sync.conf, the EFI system partition is mounted, and only then is the kernel installed.

Before rebooting

From the installer, with the new system under /mnt:

# cat /mnt/boot/efi/limine.conf
# ls /mnt/boot/efi
# cat /mnt/etc/crypttab

limine.conf should list the kernel, and on an encrypted system the command line should contain cryptroot=. The EFI system partition should hold vmlinuz-version, tinyrd.img and EFI/. /etc/crypttab exists only if there are encrypted partitions besides root.

A boot entry in the firmware

Most firmware boots the fallback path by itself. Some only boots what is listed in its boot menu; add an entry with efibootmgr(8). It needs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars; enter-chroot(8) mounts it, or in the installer:

# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Then list the entries and add one, naming the disk and the number of the EFI system partition:

# efibootmgr
# efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdX -p 1 -L rawnix -l '\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI'
# efibootmgr -v

Changing the command line

Edit CMDLINE= in /etc/limine-sync.conf, then run limine-sync. The file describes its other settings.

FILES

/boot/efi/limine.conf: The boot menu, written by limine-sync.
/etc/limine-sync.conf: The kernel command line for the menu, written by setup-boot(8).
/etc/limine.conf.in: The hand-written part of the menu.