sigen - standalone EFI executable generator

This utility automates the process of creating self-contained EFI executables for the Linux kernel using systemd-boot's EFI stub.

WARNING: This software is deprecated.

Consider using ukify, dracut or mkinitcpio instead. See here for instructions.

Installation

Arch Linux users can use the AUR package.

Users of other distros should manually package/install from source (see below). This isn't a huge issue since sigen is just a single executable file.

Building

A reasonably up-to-date Rust compiler is required.

To build, run cargo build --release. The resulting binary will be located at target/release/sigen.

Usage

sigen [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] --cmdline <cmdline> --kernel <kernel> --output <output>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -f, --force      Overwrite output file if it already exists
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -b, --backup <backup>       Make a backup of the previous output if it exists
    -c, --cmdline <cmdline>     Path to file containing the default command line arguments
    -i, --initrd <initrd>...    Path to the initramfs file(s) to include
    -k, --kernel <kernel>       Path to the kernel image
    -o, --output <output>       Path to the output file
    -s, --sign <sign> <sign>    Path to the .key and .crt files (in this order) to sign the executable with
    -S, --stub <stub>           Path to the systemd-boot stub file

Example

sigen -c /boot/cmdline -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -i /boot/amd-ucode.img -i /boot/initramfs-linux.img -o /boot/efi/linux-signed.efi -s /etc/efi-keys/db.key /etc/efi-keys/db.crt -f

Automation

To automatically regenerate the EFI executable after each kernel update, you can, for example, use systemd path triggers.

The sigen.service.example and sigen.path.example files are examples on how to implement this.

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Copyright © 2019-2020 Joaquim Monteiro

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.