#1040267 partman-efi: Should warn about EFI partition inside raid or lvm

Package:
src:partman-efi
Source:
src:partman-efi
Submitter:
Samuel Thibault
Date:
2023-07-04 18:09:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1040267#5
Date:
2023-07-04 01:04:43 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

As pointed out in #1040266, when using guided partitioning inside a
raid, partman-auto creates an EFI partition there, and then grub-install
fails because it can't register it. This error could also happen if a
user creates by hand an EFI partition inside the raid by mistake. Just
like partman-efi warns when no EFI partition is defined, it should also
warn when an EFI partition is defined inside a raid or lvm (thus
actually unreachable from EFI).

Samuel
#1040267#10
Date:
2023-07-04 01:24:11 UTC
From:
To:
Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> (2023-07-04):

It's fine to have an EFI partition inside a RAID array. One “just” needs
to pass --no-nvram and to register it manually. That's not something
that's achievable via d-i at the moment though (unless recent changes in
grub-installer, near the end of the bookworm release cycle) made it
possible indirectly.


Cheers,
#1040267#15
Date:
2023-07-04 06:09:33 UTC
From:
To:
FWIW a long ime ago I submitted a MR to allow EFI partitions only on
disk labels which support the ESP flag (i.e. not the "loop" disk label
used on LVM logical volumes and unpartitoned RAID arrays). It won't
prevent an EFI partition in a partitioned RAID array, but AFAIK manual
partitioning does not allow to create a partition table on a RAID array.

Any pointer to these recent changes ?
#1040267#20
Date:
2023-07-04 06:36:07 UTC
From:
To:
Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> (2023-07-04):

kibi@tokyo:~/debian-installer/packages/grub-installer (master=)$ git log -p -Gno-nvram
→ 0007c1296f202fff8e84640d4e1737502690ca46


Cheers,
#1040267#25
Date:
2023-07-04 06:50:29 UTC
From:
To:
Pascal Hambourg, le mar. 04 juil. 2023 08:09:33 +0200, a ecrit:

Yes, but after creating the RAID array, one can use guided partitioning
and point it at the RAID disk, and that'll happily partition it and put
an EFI partition there (see #1040266), and then grub-installer just
fails and the user is at a loss without understanding why when they
don't notice that an EFI partition was added inside the RAID array.

Ok, but the warning still seems precious to me. And it it might hint
that possibility (and the warning won't prevent the user from doing it).

Samuel
#1040267#30
Date:
2023-07-04 17:33:29 UTC
From:
To:
I expected more something about the "register it manually" part.
#1040267#35
Date:
2023-07-04 18:04:16 UTC
From:
To:
Yes, and this has always bothered me. IMO, for consistency, guided
partitioning should not allow layouts that manual partitioning does not.