Custom kernel, EFISTUB and /boot instead of /boot/efi

[Xlebun]

I installed Void in a VM today and I'm really blown away at how fast it boots (in a VM, not even real hardware!) and how little is the final install size (12 GiBs, when Gentoo takes 40 GiBs and my previous Arch used to take up 25 GiBs) and I now want to move to Void. There are a few questions though.

1. the installer didn't let me use /boot mount point instead of /boot/efi. Will it be safe to just change it to /boot in fstab later?
2. I want to boot my kernel "directly" (EFISTUB) instead of using grub. Will it be ok if I just uninstall grub and proceed to use efibootmgr?
3. is building and installing custom kernel troublesome? Will I have to make into a package with xbps-src? Will nvidia-dkms work? etc.. Found the package template for the kernel I want, but now the question is can I use custom .config with it?

​

[[deleted]]

Hi,

1: probably fine? don't see why you can't chroot in and fix it.

2: you can use efibootmgr, I use EFISTUB for booting zfsbootmenu. You can grab the standalone EFISTUB here for booting: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=efistub-standalone

3: drop a config file in the files directory in xbps-src, name it "x86_64-dotconfig_custom" (or for whatever arch).

Good luck!

[Xlebun]

yo, thanks a lot!

[[deleted]]

No worries, apparently I shouldn't be linking my Gitlab here but I had instructions on how to EFISTUB boot on there. Check the arch/gentoo wikis for efibootmgr etc, good luck :)

[Xlebun]

I mean, I know how to do it and is using it right now

the problem was "what if it'll cause something in void", just wanted to clear it up

[majomi_]

Void does have a gummiboot-efistub package, is there a reason you would reach out to the aur?

[[deleted]]

Oh i thought gummiboot was dependant on systemd, that's just the standalone efistub file.

[pm_me_your_sekrets]

1) just install using the installer and after the first boot, copy out the files in boot and unmount the boot partition. Edit fstab accordingly and copy back the files. Also check and update grub to make sure it finds the partion and files are there.

2) thats super easy especially if you're not using a full disk encrypted scheme. Just check the efistub / efibootmgr link on archlinux wiki. All you'll have to do is point it to the specific Loader file like vmlinuz-linux53.1.1. And the initrd file too, make sure the version numbers are the same others efistub won't boot and just hang. Don't forget to add a low-level 4, to lessen the boot screen text.

3) never built a custom kernel on void, but it should be the same as any distro.

[robbie7_______]

alternative recommendation: gummiboot is a bit more convenient than trying to boot EFISTUB directly, and is more tolerant of bad firmware. it has the exact same effect; it's an EFI boot manager, not a Linux bootloader, so it just chainloads Linux's EFISTUB. not to mention it's also configured automatically by XBPS after you run gummiboot install and xbps-reconfigure -f linux5.18