No UEFI boot entry created for VMware ESXi 6.7

i think we will have to create something by-hand, using efibootmgr from the ephemeral environment.

as it does not appear that esxi uses any sort of standard shim.

Will use https://github.com/canonical/packer-maas/tree/master/vmware-esxi instructions to do this.

managed to build and deploy it,

then i entered rescue mode.

found ESXi partition, which looks like an esp.

$ tree
.
├── EFI
│   ├── BOOT
│   │   └── BOOTx64.EFI
│   └── VMware
│   ├── mboot64.efi
│   └── safebt64.efi
├── ldlinux.sys
├── mboot.c32
├── root
│   ├── curtin-install-cfg.yaml
│   └── curtin-install.log
├── safeboot.c32
└── syslinux.cfg

$ md5sum */* | sort
789e1ea8b4df31be58a7f991656a679d BOOT/BOOTx64.EFI
789e1ea8b4df31be58a7f991656a679d VMware/safebt64.efi
f88ebb38cf55498e226818a16cd058ce VMware/mboot64.efi

So i'm not sure if we should be booting to mboot64.efi by default; or safebt64.efi (BOOTx64.EFI).

checking the efibootmgr from the rescue mode there is this entry:

Title: VMware ESXi Boot Manager
           ID: 0x0006
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/14b8eb66-376f-44a1-8b72-c123d53af2dc
         File: └─/EFI/VMWARE/SAFEBT64.EFI

so we could be creating that one too.

Not sure who is making it. I.e. VMware installer itself or curtin/maas.

and it is ordered correctly after the network boot stuff.

I installed VMware ESXi 6.7 in a new UEFI VM using its official installer, verified that it can successfully boot, then rebooted into an Ubuntu 20.04 ISO to read the UEFI boot order. I discovered that the official VMware ESXi 6.7 installer *isn't* configuring UEFI boot order.

# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002,0000,0003
Boot0000* UiApp FvVol(7cb8bdc9-f8eb-4f34-aaea-3ee4af6516a1)/FvFile(462caa21-7614-4503-836e-8ab6f4662331)
Boot0001* UEFI QEMU DVD-ROM QM00002 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Ata(0,1,0)N.....YM....R,Y.
Boot0002* UEFI QEMU HARDDISK QM00001 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Ata(0,0,0)N.....YM....R,Y.
Boot0003* EFI Internal Shell FvVol(7cb8bdc9-f8eb-4f34-aaea-3ee4af6516a1)/FvFile(7c04a583-9e3e-4f1c-ad65-e05268d0b4d1)

I suspect VMware ESXi is relying on the UEFI spec which states that by default the firmware will search for \EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI in configured disks if no path is configured. I'm not sure if that is something we can rely on for MAAS or if we should configure the boot order to use \EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI.

Closing the issue since MAAS supports booting VMware ESXi 7