Bug#778810: grub-efi-amd64-bin: boot/bootx86.efi problems

[Ian Campbell]

(Steve is probably best placed to say something sensible about this, but
he's away at the moment so I'll see if I can avoid sounding too dumb...)

On Fri, 2015-02-20 at 14:21 +0900, Mark Brown wrote:
> Package: grub-efi-amd64-bin
> Version: 2.02~beta2-20
> Severity: critical
> 
> On a couple of occasions recently my system has been updated to remove
> boot/bootx86.efi from the EFI boot partition, and on a new install on a
> separate machine this file was not installed at all.  Instead
> debian/grubx86.efi was left installed.  Unfortunately on both systems my
> BIOS ignores this file and will only boot boot/bootx86.efi so these
> updates make the system unbootable.

This sounds, if I'm interpreting the paths correctly, like it relates
somehow to the stuff Steve was doing in #708430, in as much as it sounds
like your system is one which would benefit from enabling that new
workaround (grub2/force_efi_extra_removable in debconf).

Do you have that new option enabled or disabled?

That said, even with the workaround disabled for some reason removing an
existing boot/bootx86.efi doesn't sound right to me. Not that I have any
how or why it would be happening :-/.

Looking at the code the only things I see which touch boot/bootx86.efi
are behind the new force_efi_extra_removable option which attempts to
update the binary -- I wonder if it is possible to fail half way and
actually only remove the old one? (Some sort of weird vfat interaction?)

> Apologies if this is filed against the wrong package, I'm not 100% clear
> what is responsible for installing these files.

It might actually be grub-efi-amd64, but I think you were close
enough ;-).

Ian.