x86, efi: Add EFI boot stub documentation

Since we can't expect every user to read the EFI boot stub code it
seems prudent to have a couple of paragraphs explaining what it is and
how it works.

The "initrd=" option in particular is tricky because it only
understands absolute EFI-style paths (backslashes as directory
separators), and until now this hasn't been documented anywhere. This
has tripped up a couple of users.

Cc: Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Matt Fleming <matt.fleming@intel.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1331907517-3985-4-git-send-email-matt@console-pimps.org
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>

1 files changed, 65 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/x86/efi-stub.txt b/Documentation/x86/efi-stub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..44e6bb6ead10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/x86/efi-stub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+                          The EFI Boot Stub
+                     ---------------------------
+
+On the x86 platform, a bzImage can masquerade as a PE/COFF image,
+thereby convincing EFI firmware loaders to load it as an EFI
+executable. The code that modifies the bzImage header, along with the
+EFI-specific entry point that the firmware loader jumps to are
+collectively known as the "EFI boot stub", and live in
+arch/x86/boot/header.S and arch/x86/boot/compressed/eboot.c,
+respectively.
+
+By using the EFI boot stub it's possible to boot a Linux kernel
+without the use of a conventional EFI boot loader, such as grub or
+elilo. Since the EFI boot stub performs the jobs of a boot loader, in
+a certain sense it *IS* the boot loader.
+
+The EFI boot stub is enabled with the CONFIG_EFI_STUB kernel option.
+
+
+**** How to install bzImage.efi
+
+The bzImage located in arch/x86/boot/bzImage must be copied to the EFI
+System Partiion (ESP) and renamed with the extension ".efi". Without
+the extension the EFI firmware loader will refuse to execute it. It's
+not possible to execute bzImage.efi from the usual Linux file systems
+because EFI firmware doesn't have support for them.
+
+
+**** Passing kernel parameters from the EFI shell
+
+Arguments to the kernel can be passed after bzImage.efi, e.g.
+
+        fs0:> bzImage.efi console=ttyS0 root=/dev/sda4
+
+
+**** The "initrd=" option
+
+Like most boot loaders, the EFI stub allows the user to specify
+multiple initrd files using the "initrd=" option. This is the only EFI
+stub-specific command line parameter, everything else is passed to the
+kernel when it boots.
+
+The path to the initrd file must be an absolute path from the
+beginning of the ESP, relative path names do not work. Also, the path
+is an EFI-style path and directory elements must be separated with
+backslashes (\). For example, given the following directory layout,
+
+fs0:>
+        Kernels\
+                        bzImage.efi
+                        initrd-large.img
+
+        Ramdisks\
+                        initrd-small.img
+                        initrd-medium.img
+
+to boot with the initrd-large.img file if the current working
+directory is fs0:\Kernels, the following command must be used,
+
+        fs0:\Kernels> bzImage.efi initrd=\Kernels\initrd-large.img
+
+Notice how bzImage.efi can be specified with a relative path. That's
+because the image we're executing is interpreted by the EFI shell,
+which understands relative paths, whereas the rest of the command line
+is passed to bzImage.efi.