Description of problem: GRUB2 forces a kernel version check for the EFI handover protocol added in 3.6. This makes older EFI kernels unable to boot in EFI environment. Introduced here http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/grub2.git/tree/grub2-linuxefi.patch + if (lh.version < grub_cpu_to_le16 (0x020b)) + { + grub_error (GRUB_ERR_BAD_OS, N_("kernel too old")); + goto fail; + } Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): grub2-efi-2.00-12.fc18 kernel-3.5.6-1.fc17 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install a older kernel. 2. Reboot. Actual results: Loading Fedora (3.5.6-1.fc17.x86_64) Secure boot not enabled error: kernel too old. Loading initial ramdisk ... error: you need to load the kernel first. Press any key to continue... Expected results: The kernel is booted.
I feel like this should have a higher priority. If you're like me ;) and you keep a "backup"/safe/known-good kernel on a system this results in the known-good kernel not booting. In my case, I upgraded to F18 and the base F18 kernel would not boot. I then went back to the old known-good F17 kernel and it wouldn't boot. ... which now means I have a brick for a laptop. It's a good thing that I don't keep irreplaceable data on my laptop otherwise I'd be screaming at someone right now ;) P.
... I wonder if the "fix" here is to update the F17 kernel to latest, verify it boots, and then update the rest of the system? Either way, I can't possibly be the only one in this mess... P.
The fix here is probably to use "linux" and "initrd" instead of "linuxefi" and "initrdefi" on those old kernels, but right now there's not an easy way to detect that from grub2-mkconfig.
Even once that's done, you're going to hit EFI bugs where the answer is "you need to use a newer kernel and 'linuxefi'".
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