Bug#1135137: Acknowledgement (upgrade-reports: Bookworm -> Trixie mdadm raid EFI not updated on both disks)

[Thorsten Behrens]

Steve and team,

> It's a longstanding hole in grub-efi (sorry!), but there is nothing
> special here yet to make a RAIDed ESP work.

OK I get it now. The plot thickens. That is why it worked 11->12 - the EFI didn't change version. This is the EFI from 11

```
$ strings /mnt/second-efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi | grep -i grub | tail -6
        source $prefix/grub.cfg
        source $cmdpath/grub.cfg
normal (memdisk)/grub.cfg
grub,4,Free Software Foundation,grub,2.06,https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
grub.debian,4,Debian,grub2,2.06-3~deb11u6,https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/grub2
&Debian Secure Boot Signer 2022 - grub20

$ strings /mnt/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi | grep -i grub | tail -6
strings: '/mnt/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi': No such file
debian at ethstaker-mumbai:~$ strings /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi | grep -i grub | tail -6
        source $prefix/grub.cfg
        source $cmdpath/grub.cfg
normal (memdisk)/grub.cfg
grub,4,Free Software Foundation,grub,2.06,https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
grub.debian,4,Debian,grub2,2.06-3~deb11u6,https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/grub2
&Debian Secure Boot Signer 2022 - grub20
```

Same version as 12. 2.06 in both cases. I'm assuming `2.06-13+deb12u1` and `2.06-3~deb11u6` are binary compatible, that is if the machine boots from EFI `2.06-3~deb11u6` into Debian 12 grub, all is well.

Anecdotally that seems to be true because our 11->12 fleet upgrade went without a hitch in 2023.

With 12->13, the EFI version changes, and just `/boot/efi` gets updated. Then it's up to the vagaries of ... efibootmgr I suppose, whether the updated partition is used or no. In my testing failure is intermittent. The system may or may not reboot on the old EFI, but once it does, the only way back is to go into EFI shell, choose the other fs like say fs1:, and then run shimx64.efi (the upgraded one) from there.

This is not necessarily a bug, it's a (missing) feature. Which bites users going from 12->13 because now EFI version changes.

Can I suggest at a minimum documentation and a warning at https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgrading.en.html#possible-issues-during-upgrade and maybe even before then, a warning earlier in the doc to look at the possible issues section and what to do about multi-disk EFI setups.

Completely amazing ofc would be that grub-install or "whatever responsible component" sees all EFI entries in efibootmgr and upgrades / installs into all of them, or has a switch to do so, which gets exercised on grub package update.

Yours
Thorsten
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