Doesn't boot on Intel Atom Baytrail - missing 32-bit UEFI support

[ytruplyt53]

Describe the issue you are experiencing

After writing the image (7.4) to the internal eMMC from my Intel Atom Z3735F machine it's not able to boot. With a external ssd connected via usb it is the same result.

Looks like their is no bootia32.efi but only a bootx64.efi in the boot partition which could explain this.

What operating system image do you use?

generic-x86-64 (Generic UEFI capable x86-64 systems)

What version of Home Assistant Operating System is installed?

7.4

Did you upgrade the Operating System.

No

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Get yourself a device with a Intel Atom Z3735F (or probably any other Bay-Trail or Cherry-Trail based CPU) and internal eMMC
2. Boot a live system of your choice
3. Write and verify the HaOS image
4. Try to boot it

Anything in the Supervisor logs that might be useful for us?

No, because it doesn't boot

Anything in the Host logs that might be useful for us?

No, because it doesn't boot

System Health information

No response

Additional information

No response

[agners]

Hm, 32-bit UEFI boot wasn't really a thing in PC world. The CPU supports 64-bit, so it should support bootx64.efi. Maybe a BIOS update helps?

Just to be sure: Did you make sure to enable UEFI boot and disable secure boot (probably not available on that machine yet)

[ytruplyt53]

Hm, 32-bit UEFI boot wasn't really a thing in PC world.

Indeed, but Intel still released a total of 46 baytrail cpus. It might also be that the cherry trail series is affected to by this awkwardness.

enable UEFI boot

actually this is the only way to boot this as there is no "legacy boot"

disable secure boot

included but disabled

[ytruplyt53]

Did "some" experiments.

When I add a bootia32.efi in the EFI/BOOT directory my machine can detect it as a boot device.

I grabbed a random from github and it booted into a grub shell. Just copying the bootx64.efi and rename to bootia32.efi results in efi shell error.

The idea came after I read this here: https://www.barebox.org/doc/latest/boards/efi.html

This machine actually runs home assistant supervisor since years but on debian. I need to choose the multi-arch debian iso for installation.

[agners]

This machine actually runs home assistant supervisor since years but on debian. I need to choose the multi-arch debian iso for installation.

Hm, not familiar with that, is it using a 64-bit kernel then (check uname -a)?

I guess technically it should be possible to build and distribute a second build of Barebox for UEFI 32-bit. This post claims that it is possible to boot a 64-bit kernel from a 32-bit EFI using Grub, quite likely it works also with Barebox. It certainly needs the CONFIG_EFI_MIXED=y kernel config.

All that said, it seems this is a rather exotic platform at this point. I am not opposed to support it, but since I have no hardware and there is no widespread request for it, its unlikely I am going to work on it.

[ytruplyt53]

is it using a 64-bit kernel then

Indeed. This works since debian 8

https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#Support_for_mixed-mode_systems:_64-bit_system_with_32-bit_UEFI

[ytruplyt53]

@agners I just saw in another issue that HaOS (8) switches to grub. 💪

Could a 32 bit UEFI support maybe added then? It should be as easy as install/add grub-efi-ia32 grub-efi-ia32-bin packages as grub has full support booting a 64bit os with 32bit efi 🎉

If testing is necessary please count me in!

[agners]

Actually, it seems that Buildroot we are using currently (2021.08) only supports one EFI GRUB configuration at a time. But it seems that this changed in upstream Buildroot with this patch.

Updating Buildroot to 2022.02 is on my todo list. I'll give this a try after updating to it.

[uros76]

Actually, it seems that Buildroot we are using currently (2021.08) only supports one EFI GRUB configuration at a time. But it seems that this changed in upstream Buildroot with this patch.

Updating Buildroot to 2022.02 is on my todo list. I'll give this a try after updating to it.

Hi. Any update supporting 32bit UEFI? I have a similar device like ytruplyt53 and cant get HA used beyond grub bootup.

[agners]

@uros76 @ytruplyt53 the latest OS 8.0 development builds have the 32-bit UEFI version enabled. Unfortunately, I can't test it on my end as I don't have such hardware. Can one of you give this image a try?

https://os-builds.home-assistant.io/8.0.dev20220331/

[uros76]

@uros76 @ytruplyt53 the latest OS 8.0 development builds have the 32-bit UEFI version enabled. Unfortunately, I can't test it on my end as I don't have such hardware. Can one of you give this image a try?

https://os-builds.home-assistant.io/8.0.dev20220331/

This is good news, thanks. In the meantime, I managed to find 64bit bios for my devices which helped me get current HA OS installed without a problem.

Perhaps @ytruplyt53 can test?

[amonhk]

@agners it works perfectly
thank you very much you saved my old air-vision nvr