GRUB-free booting
Conclusions and Outlook
Fedora and Red Hat are working on a system without an external bootloader. The nmbl project, currently still in the concept phase, integrates the boot process into a single package and starts the kernel directly via an EFI stub. TPM 2.0 and optional Secure Boot offer the required protections.
Although the EFI stub approach has been around for years, it has remained impractical for the majority of users. If Fedora introduces nmbl as the standard method for system startup, users will not only benefit from improved security but also from shorter startup times. Plus, a kernel update will simply mean editing a UKI, without time-consuming bootloader configuration overhead.
Infos
- systemd-boot: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-boot
- "Brave New Trusted Boot World," Pid Eins, October 24, 2022: https://0pointer.de/blog/brave-new-trusted-boot-world.html
- TPM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
- UAPI: https://uapi-group.org/
- UKI: https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/unified_kernel_image/
- systemd-stub: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-stub.html
- ukify: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/ukify.html
- "nmbl: We Don't Need a Bootloader," June 13, 2024: https://fizuxchyk.wordpress.com/2024/06/13/nmbl-we-dont-need-a-bootloader/
- kexec: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kexec
- "How to Build and Boot nmbl on a Fedora Virtual Machine," June 13, 2024: https://fizuxchyk.wordpress.com/2024/06/13/how-build-and-boot-nmbl-on-a-fedora-virtual-machine/
- nmbl on GitHub: https://github.com/rhboot/nmbl-poc
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