Subiquity crash on Lenovo X13s because UEFI variables not supported

[Heinrich Schuchardt]

The following crash occurs in curtin.
The device does not provide access to UEFI variables at runtime.

The error from efibootmgr should only result in a warning and not stop the installation process.

         finish: cmd-install/stage-curthooks/builtin/cmd-curthooks/install-grub: FAIL: installing grub to target devices
         finish: cmd-install/stage-curthooks/builtin/cmd-curthooks/configuring-bootloader: FAIL: configuring target system bootloader
         finish: cmd-install/stage-curthooks/builtin/cmd-curthooks: FAIL: curtin command curthooks
         Traceback (most recent call last):
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/commands/main.py", line 202, in main
             ret = args.func(args)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/commands/curthooks.py", line 1903, in curthooks
             builtin_curthooks(cfg, target, state)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/commands/curthooks.py", line 1868, in builtin_curthooks
             setup_grub(cfg, target, osfamily=osfamily,
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/commands/curthooks.py", line 818, in setup_grub
             efi_orig_output = util.get_efibootmgr(target)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/util.py", line 967, in get_efibootmgr
             stdout, _ = in_chroot.subp(['efibootmgr', '-v'], capture=True)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/util.py", line 787, in subp
             return subp(*args, **kwargs)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/util.py", line 275, in subp
             return _subp(*args, **kwargs)
           File "/snap/subiquity/4236/lib/python3.8/site-packages/curtin/util.py", line 139, in _subp
             raise ProcessExecutionError(stdout=out, stderr=err,
         curtin.util.ProcessExecutionError: Unexpected error while running command.
         Command: ['unshare', '--fork', '--pid', '--', 'chroot', '/target', 'efibootmgr', '-v']
         Exit code: 2
         Reason: -
         Stdout: ''
         Stderr: EFI variables are not supported on this system.

         Unexpected error while running command.
         Command: ['unshare', '--fork', '--pid', '--', 'chroot', '/target', 'efibootmgr', '-v']
         Exit code: 2
         Reason: -
         Stdout: ''
         Stderr: EFI variables are not supported on this system.

[Heinrich Schuchardt (xypron)]

In curtin we could check if /sys/firmware/efi/efivars exists. If it does not exist update_nvram has to be False.

I wonder why the problem did not occur on the U-Boot based riscv64 platforms. There EFI variables can be read but not set. Maybe as we start with a system without boot options we simply do not try to delete or reorder boot options.

[Heinrich Schuchardt (xypron)]

Pull request created for curtin: https://code.launchpad.net/~xypron/curtin/+git/curtin/+merge/435991

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2003222

[Gaele Strootman (gaele)]

This happened to me using Ubiquity on a Macbook Pro 11,3.

[Heinrich Schuchardt (xypron)]

In GRUB we have
debian/patches/efivar-check-that-efivarfs-is-writeable.patch
which ensures that if EFI variables exist but are no writable we don't throw an error in grub-install.

Commit 931e97b57b64 ("linux: handle non-ACPI systems in device_get()") in https://github.com/rhinstaller/efivar ensures that EFI variables can be accessed by efibootmgr on non-ACPI systems. Since efivar (37-6ubuntu3) this fix is available in Mantic and Noble.

Closing as fix released.