During the installation under UEFI mode, "Could not open \EFI\BOOT\fallback.efi: 14" shows after passed the BIOS phase.

Bug #1297069 reported by Yu Ning
30
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
OEM Priority Project
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
Trusty
New
Undecided
Unassigned
shim (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Trusty
Triaged
Medium
Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre

Bug Description

During the installation under UEFI mode, "Could not open \EFI\BOOT\fallback.efi: 14" shows after passed the BIOS phase.

I checked the source code and noticed that the messages are printed in function should_use_fallback(). If this function is just a detector then how about simply remove the output from this function to a provide a better user experience?

Please refer to the attached patch.

Tags: patch

CVE References

Revision history for this message
Yu Ning (yuningdodo) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Yu Ning (yuningdodo) wrote :

Please also refer to the attached screenshot for the issue.

Revision history for this message
Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) wrote :

The attachment "no-output-on-fallback-checking.patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

tags: added: patch
Changed in shim (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Steve Langasek (vorlon)
Changed in shim (Ubuntu):
importance: Wishlist → Medium
Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Note that this is already fixed in bzr (lp:ubuntu/shim) by building fallback.efi; but this will require a round-trip to Microsoft for signing to get this updated in our images.

Changed in shim (Ubuntu):
status: New → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Yu Ning (yuningdodo) wrote :

Hi Steve Langasek, thank you, just want to double confirm one thing, I checked lp:ubuntu/shim, the last commit is:

79. By Steve Langasek on 2013-09-27
Install fallback.efi.signed as well, to lay the groundwork for fallback
handling (wanted when we have to move a drive between machines, or when

And we still can find those Print() in the source code.

Could you give me more hints how is this issue get fixed? Thanks.

Ara Pulido (ara)
Changed in oem-priority:
status: New → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Yu,

The point is that the message in question is shown because of a legitimate misconfiguration: fallback.efi should be present and is not. Once that is corrected, there is no need to remove the Print() call.

The other Print() calls removed in your patch are not shown in your screenshot, so I'm not sure that they need to be removed either.

Revision history for this message
Yu Ning (yuningdodo) wrote :

Steve, thanks for the explanation, now I'm clear of the solution, there is no need to remove any of the Print() calls.

Ara Pulido (ara)
Changed in oem-priority:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) wrote :

From what I've interpreted reading about the purpose of fallback.efi, you genuinely do not want fallback.efi to exist when you are booting from removable media. Only when booting from the existing disk that you may or may not have moved to another machine.

The portion of the submitted patch that removed the error message is exactly the same thing that ended up upstream.

https://github.com/mjg59/shim/commit/41e18d4334d84cb5f7c7dd044c9afaf24a0a6538

Changed in shim (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → New
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package shim - 0.7-0ubuntu4

---------------
shim (0.7-0ubuntu4) utopic; urgency=medium

  * SECURITY UPDATE: heap overflow and out-of-bounds read access when
    parsing DHCPv6 information
    - debian/patches/CVE-2014-3675.patch: apply proper bounds checking
      when parsing data provided in DHCPv6 packets.
    - CVE-2014-3675
    - CVE-2014-3676
  * SECURITY UPDATE: memory corruption when processing user-provided key
    lists
    - debian/patches/CVE-2014-3677.patch: detect malformed machine owner
      key (MOK) lists and ignore them, avoiding possible memory corruption.
    - CVE-2014-3677

shim (0.7-0ubuntu2) utopic; urgency=medium

  * Restore debian/patches/prototypes, which still is needed on shim 0.7
    but only detected on the buildds.
  * Update debian/patches/prototypes with some new declarations needed for
    openssl 0.9.8za update.

shim (0.7-0ubuntu1) utopic; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release.
    - fix spurious error message when fallback.efi is not present, as will
      always be the case for removable media. LP: #1297069.
    - drop most patches, included upstream.
  * debian/patches/0001-Update-openssl-to-0.9.8za.patch: cherry-pick
    openssl 0.9.8za in via upstream.

shim (0.4-0ubuntu5) utopic; urgency=low

  * Install fallback.efi.signed as well, to lay the groundwork for fallback
    handling (wanted when we have to move a drive between machines, or when
    the firmware loses its marbles^W nvram).
 -- Steve Langasek <email address hidden> Wed, 08 Oct 2014 06:40:40 +0000

Changed in shim (Ubuntu):
status: New → Fix Released
Ara Pulido (ara)
Changed in oem-priority:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)
Changed in oem-priority:
milestone: none → ubuntu12.04.4
Ara Pulido (ara)
Changed in oem-priority:
milestone: ubuntu12.04.4 → none
Steve Langasek (vorlon)
Changed in shim (Ubuntu Trusty):
assignee: nobody → Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (mathieu-tl)
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Triaged
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