efifs VS mkinitcpio

See also UEFI drivers that can read a bunch of other file systems (btrfs, ext2/3/4, HFS, ISO, NTFS, UFS/FFS, XFS, ZFS, etc):

* https://efi.akeo.ie

* https://github.com/pbatard/efifs

The UEFI spec specifies (§13.3) that firmware is only required to read FAT32/16/12, which is generally why your /boot/efi is VFAT/FAT32.

In theory you would still need a FAT32 efi 'stub' partition with the exFAT filesystem drivers which you have to load before loading the WinPE loader (bootmgfw.efi).

I am pretty sure that that I am doing something incorrectly with the configuration files for the rEFInd bootloader, but everything else should be correct. However, as I write this, I barely realized did I not use the following commands recommended from the "Usage" section from the aforementioned website where I downloaded the zfs_x64.efi driver file for rEFInd:

I found the drivers here https://efi.akeo.ie/ . Which means, that any EFI bootloader able to load them will be able to use them. They are not for bootloader, but it is the firmware which will use them. As i said, i am little bit afraid that it will not work on any board as some manufacturers have pretty buggy firmware when talking about infrequently used features. Also i am bit unsure they will work with secure boot as they are gpl3 thus will be never signed by Microsoft and i don't know what UEFI requirements for drivers are in this regard.

Even for those using systemd-boot with custom efi drivers to provide functionality, it's worth noting that those drivers are being developed downstream of GRUB.

I think you can also add btrfs filesystem support for sd-boot by including the EFI drivers for it on the EFI partition instead, from https://github.com/pbatard/efifs/releases I think. Haven't tried it myself though.

EFI doesn't actually mandate FAT for the system partition. The system partition can be any filesystem that the firmware supports.

Of course, pretty much all EFI implementations only support FAT, so it's a bit of a moot point; the only one I'm aware of that supports anything else is the one on Intel Macs, which also understands HFS+.

You can find a huge selection of EFI filesystem drivers at https://efi.akeo.ie/ but they're derived from GRUB and hence GPL, so don't expect the likes of American Megatrends to be bundling these any time soon.

This file has been changed recently and the wiki still references the old line. You have to modify this line now:

mkinitcpio is an arch thing: https://github.com/archlinux/mkinitcpio

The Arch Linux devs don't have infinite time and energy, so yes less-important issues that affect less users get diprioritized. You're welcome to PR the fix yourself, here's the mkinitcpio repo: https://github.com/archlinux/mkinitcpio

The general logic was changed in the new mkinitcpio release. https://github.com/archlinux/mkinitcpio/pull/54/files

That's an odd one since reinstalling the package fixes the issue. I wouldn't be so sure it's grub because it just loads the vmlinuz and initramfs that are suffixed with the pkgbase. That will not change based on the kernel version and pkgrel version. Someone brought up needing a hook. the mkinitcpio package already installs hooks and scripts necessary for maintaining a mkinitcpio prefix for each kernel for the initramfs image generation and installing vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz-${pkgbase} on upgrades. Everyone with the official mkinitcpio package is going to have the same /usr/share/libalpm/scripts/mkinitcpio-install shell script. Running grub-mkconfig is pointless for a kernel upgrade for the reason stated. All it does is export variables from /etc/default/grub and concatenates /etc/grub.d/* into a single config file. If there was a grub config issue it's unlikely you would ever be able to boot.

mkinitcpio made zstd the default on 2021-02-17

The number of thread is, but the compression level isn't. Because -3 is a sane default for the compression level in time of compression time and output file size, but this can differ for your machine. I find that on my machine best compression level is -15 or -16 for size and compression time. Since it will take a 1 second more to compress but it will yield a file 80% more compressed than the default. Here is the pill request where the defaults where changed mkinitcpio#47