Been down the rabbit hole lately of UEFI Secure Boot issues, and decided to write an overview of how it works out-of-the-box in the excellent Debian-based Linux Mint LMDE 6.

Have mostly been researching this stuff as I was looking to replace GRUB entirely with systemd-boot on one of my systems. Will likely write a follow-up piece documenting that journey if I think it’d be interesting to some nerds out there.

  • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Perhaps I missed it when skimming the article, but why were you looking to replace GRUB?

    In case it was in the article, it might be worth adding that information up here.

    • TiffyBelle@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      Good question! There’s a few reasons, I guess:

      • There’s a large element of “because I can” to this, just to explore how stupid the scope of systemd is as a suite.
      • There’s a small practical element. GRUB itself is quite a hefty tool to accommodate all kinds of boot setups, and it works well. If you have a simple boot setup though you could probably shave a couple of seconds off of the boot time just by using the simplified sd-boot and loading the kernel via its EFIStub.
      • A learning exercise in self-signing EFI binaries, enrolling a MOK (if I use Shim), and setting up scripts to handle updates.

      All boils down to my enjoyment of doing weird nerdy things though, ultimately. =)