UEFI Support in AII

Written
27 February 2017
Author
Michel Jouvin

UEFI Support in AII

Quattor 17.3 introduced UEFI support in AII. It is based on using the Grub2 EFI loader instead of PXELINUX/SYSLINUX. This page describes how to enable it, when you have an AII working configuration for legacy BIOS.

Changes to AII Server Configuration

By default, AII server configuration requires no change to enable the UEFI support (the UEFI boot configuration files are produced in addition to the PXELINUX ones) but a few additional files must be installed on the TFTP server, in a directory called by default grub-efi, in the same location where your pxelinux.cfg directory is. The required files are:

  • Grub2 EFI loader: see the section below
  • localboot.cfg for Grub2 EFI: recommended file is provided by aii-pxelinux RPM and installed in /usr/share/doc/aii-pxelinux-VERSION/eg (localboot.cfg.grub2).

Also the DHCP server configuration must be updated to recognize the UEFI vendor class and use the appropriate boot loader and configuration files. On an ISC DHCP server, this is typically done by adding in the dhcpd configuration (in the file dedicated to Quattor-managed machines for example) something like:

option space PXE;
option PXE.mtftp-ip    code 1 = ip-address;
option PXE.mtftp-cport code 2 = unsigned integer 16;
option PXE.mtftp-sport code 3 = unsigned integer 16;
option PXE.mtftp-tmout code 4 = unsigned integer 8;
option PXE.mtftp-delay code 5 = unsigned integer 8;
option arch code 93 = unsigned integer 16; # RFC4578

# This should be the group where you have the Quattor-related dhcpd parameters.
group {

  # grubx64.efi path (quattor/grub2-efi) should be adjusted to reflect its path
  # relative to the TFTP server root. This must be the directory where the Grub2
  # configuration files are located (and not its parent as for PXELINUX).
  if option arch = 00:07 {
    filename "quattor/grub2-efi/grubx64.efi";
  } else if option arch = 00:09 {
    filename "quattor/grub2-efi/grubx64.efi";
  } else {
    filename "quattor/pxelinux.0";
  }

  .... (your existing configuration)

See SYSLINUX documentation for more details on the DHCP server configuration.

Building the Grub2 UEFI boot loader

EL7 provides a grub2-efi package (there is no Grub2 package for EL6): the boot loader is /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grubx64.efi. Unfortunately, it is hardly usable without being rebuilt, as the default paths it uses are generally inappropriate and it may also lack the support for installing an EL6 machine (EL6 cannot be installed with the linuxefi command and requires the linux command to be used).

Note: the Grub2 UEFI boot loader provided by EL7 can be used on an AII server running EL6.

To rebuild your own Grub2 boot loader, install the the packages grub2-tools (commands to manage Grub2) and grub2-efi-modules (Grub2 modules). There are several possibilities but the recommended method is to use is grub2-mkimage command to build a boot loader image tailored for your configuration. grub2-mkimage important options are:

  • --prefix: defines where the additional Grub modules (if any) are located. You need to start this path with (pxe) which means that the modules are reachable through the TFTP server and that the following path is relative to the TFTP server root. For example, (pxe)/grub2-modules means that the Grub2 modules are located in directory grub2/modules under the TFTP server root. Note that if you rebuild the Grub2 boot loader as suggested here, this directory is not used.
  • List of modules to add to the boot loader image: they are passed as parameters to grub2-mkimage. You typically need efi_gop efi_uga efinet linux linux16 linuxefi: linux is not needed if you don’t intend to install EL6 machine with Grub2 UEFI (but this is harmless to add them if you have some control over the persons who can trigger the installtion).
  • --format=x86_64-efi: required for the boot loader to be usable with a UEFI firmware.
  • --output: name of the boot loader file produced by the command. This is the file that you need to copy to your TFTP server directory where the Grub2 configuration files will be generated by aii-shellfe --conigure (this directory must match your DHCP server configuration, see above).

A typical grub2-mkimage command with the prefix example explained above (to be update according to your configuration) is:

grub2-mkimage --format=x86_64-efi --output=grubx64.efi --prefix='(pxe)/grub2-modules' efi_gop efi_uga efinet linux linuxefi

See the Grub2 manual for details.

New aii-shellfe Configuration Options

New aii-shellfe configuration options have been introduced with the UEFI support. Look at /usr/share/doc/aii-server-VERSION/eg/aii-shellfe.conf file for a list of all these options and their expected values.

UEFI support has been designed to work without any change to the configuration. One exception is grub2_efi_kernel_root that controls the path to the kernel to be loaded. Grub2 EFI interprets the path differently from PXELINUX: the path must be an absolute path (starting with a /) which is the path relative to the TFTP server root. If you use the default directory name for Grub2 configuration files (grub2-efi) and if your Quattor TFTP server directory is two levels under / (like in /tftproot/quattor when /tftproot is the TFTP server root), the default value should be appropriate. Else you may need to adjust the path with grub2_efi_kernel_root. Enable TFTP server verbose mode to troubleshoot problems related to this path.

Changes to Host Profiles

There is no change required to activate the use of UEFI for a given machine. Grub2 UEFI boot will be used if the machine firmware is configured to use UEFI, PXELINUX will be used if the firmware is configured to use legacy BIOS. The DHCP request will contain the information and the appropriate configuration will be selected.

Nevertheless, to be able to successfully install the machine through Grub2 UEFI, the first partition of the system disk must dedicated to Grub2. If you use the template library, this partition is automatically added if you define the variable DISK_BIOS_TYPE_UEFI to true. Else, you need to ensure that the first partition created has a size of 200 MB and has its flag set to bios_grub.

Note: it is harmless to define variable DISK_BIOS_TYPE_UEFI on every machine, even if it is still using the legacy BIOS. The only exception is if you want to boot a disk larger than 2 GB with the legacy BIOS: in this case the variable DISK_BOOT_ADD_BIOSBOOT_PART must be defined instead (and the partition flag is not the one expected by Grub2 UEFI).

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