falling back to UiApp?

falling back to UiApp?

[Laszlo Ersek]

Hi Ray,

the UiApp application is added to the UEFI boot order automatically, but
it is not invoked automatically, even if BDS gives up and hangs with

  [Bds] Unable to boot!

For example, consider the following:
- no UEFI bootable application available anywhere in the system,
- ... not even for the default platform recovery option,
- no shell is built into the firmware image,
- but UiApp is available in the firmware image.

Is it possible to jump to UiApp in this case, rather than hanging with

  [Bds] Unable to boot!

?

Can (or should) platform code do something about this?

Or would this conflict with the UEFI spec either way?

Thank you,
Laszlo

Re: falling back to UiApp?

[Ni, Ruiyu]

Laszlo,
I believe the "Unable to boot" message was added by intention.

I just checked the UEFI Spec Boot Manager chapter again, still I didn't
find any wording to say what to do, when boot and recovery failure
happens.

Putting "Unable to boot" message there is to tell platform developer
that system is not in good state (no bootable option), helpful for debugging.

But rethinking about that, maybe I could also print a user-visible
string "Unable to boot, press any key to enter Boot Manager Menu." to
STD console and redirect to Boot Manager Menu when any key is received.

I still don't like to silently show UI when this failure happens.

What's your opinion?
If you agree, could you please help submit a Bugzilla tracker?

Thanks/Ray

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laszlo Ersek [mailto:lersek@redhat.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 10:23 PM
> To: Ni, Ruiyu <ruiyu.ni@intel.com>
> Cc: edk2-devel-01 <edk2-devel@lists.01.org>
> Subject: falling back to UiApp?
> 
> Hi Ray,
> 
> the UiApp application is added to the UEFI boot order automatically, but it is not
> invoked automatically, even if BDS gives up and hangs with
> 
>   [Bds] Unable to boot!
> 
> For example, consider the following:
> - no UEFI bootable application available anywhere in the system,
> - ... not even for the default platform recovery option,
> - no shell is built into the firmware image,
> - but UiApp is available in the firmware image.
> 
> Is it possible to jump to UiApp in this case, rather than hanging with
> 
>   [Bds] Unable to boot!
> 
> ?
> 
> Can (or should) platform code do something about this?
> 
> Or would this conflict with the UEFI spec either way?
> 
> Thank you,
> Laszlo

Re: falling back to UiApp?

[Andrew Fish]

Laszlo,

There is no platform policy in the UEFI spec by design. The spec is policy agnostic, as an ATM policy would be different from a server, etc. It's all implementation choice.
> On Apr 26, 2017, at 10:40 PM, Ni, Ruiyu <ruiyu.ni@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Laszlo,
> I believe the "Unable to boot" message was added by intention.
> 
> I just checked the UEFI Spec Boot Manager chapter again, still I didn't
> find any wording to say what to do, when boot and recovery failure
> happens.
> 
> Putting "Unable to boot" message there is to tell platform developer
> that system is not in good state (no bootable option), helpful for debugging.
> 
> But rethinking about that, maybe I could also print a user-visible
> string "Unable to boot, press any key to enter Boot Manager Menu." to
> STD console and redirect to Boot Manager Menu when any key is received.
> 
> I still don't like to silently show UI when this failure happens.
> 
> What's your opinion?
> If you agree, could you please help submit a Bugzilla tracker?
> 
> Thanks/Ray
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Laszlo Ersek [mailto:lersek@redhat.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 10:23 PM
>> To: Ni, Ruiyu <ruiyu.ni@intel.com>
>> Cc: edk2-devel-01 <edk2-devel@lists.01.org>
>> Subject: falling back to UiApp?
>> 
>> Hi Ray,
>> 
>> the UiApp application is added to the UEFI boot order automatically, but it is not
>> invoked automatically, even if BDS gives up and hangs with
>> 
>>  [Bds] Unable to boot!
>> 
>> For example, consider the following:
>> - no UEFI bootable application available anywhere in the system,
>> - ... not even for the default platform recovery option,
>> - no shell is built into the firmware image,
>> - but UiApp is available in the firmware image.
>> 
>> Is it possible to jump to UiApp in this case, rather than hanging with
>> 
>>  [Bds] Unable to boot!
>> 
>> ?
>> 
>> Can (or should) platform code do something about this?
>> 
>> Or would this conflict with the UEFI spec either way?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> Laszlo
> _______________________________________________
> edk2-devel mailing list
> edk2-devel@lists.01.org
> https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel

Re: falling back to UiApp?

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 04/27/17 07:40, Ni, Ruiyu wrote:
> Laszlo,
> I believe the "Unable to boot" message was added by intention.
> 
> I just checked the UEFI Spec Boot Manager chapter again, still I didn't
> find any wording to say what to do, when boot and recovery failure
> happens.
> 
> Putting "Unable to boot" message there is to tell platform developer
> that system is not in good state (no bootable option), helpful for debugging.
> 
> But rethinking about that, maybe I could also print a user-visible
> string "Unable to boot, press any key to enter Boot Manager Menu." to
> STD console and redirect to Boot Manager Menu when any key is received.

This sounds great!

> 
> I still don't like to silently show UI when this failure happens.

I think your suggestion above is better than my original thought (which
was just a guess, really). The request I originally received was to show
"something" to the user on the screen, rather than just a (more or less
invisible) DEBUG message via DebugLib.

> What's your opinion?
> If you agree, could you please help submit a Bugzilla tracker?

I filed <https://bugzilla.tianocore.org/show_bug.cgi?id=513>.

Thank you!
Laszlo

> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Laszlo Ersek [mailto:lersek@redhat.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 10:23 PM
>> To: Ni, Ruiyu <ruiyu.ni@intel.com>
>> Cc: edk2-devel-01 <edk2-devel@lists.01.org>
>> Subject: falling back to UiApp?
>>
>> Hi Ray,
>>
>> the UiApp application is added to the UEFI boot order automatically, but it is not
>> invoked automatically, even if BDS gives up and hangs with
>>
>>   [Bds] Unable to boot!
>>
>> For example, consider the following:
>> - no UEFI bootable application available anywhere in the system,
>> - ... not even for the default platform recovery option,
>> - no shell is built into the firmware image,
>> - but UiApp is available in the firmware image.
>>
>> Is it possible to jump to UiApp in this case, rather than hanging with
>>
>>   [Bds] Unable to boot!
>>
>> ?
>>
>> Can (or should) platform code do something about this?
>>
>> Or would this conflict with the UEFI spec either way?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Laszlo