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README.md: Various updates
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Various bits.

Closes: #1
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cgwalters committed Sep 3, 2020
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Expand Up @@ -25,27 +25,41 @@ OS update system agnostic tool to manage updates for things like:

This project originated in [this Fedora CoreOS github issue](https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker/issues/510).

The scope is otherwise limited; for example, bootupd will not
manage anything related to the kernel such as kernel arguments;
that's for tools like `grubby` and `ostree`.

## Status

Currently a work in progress and is not ready to ship for production
updates, but early feedback on the design is appreciated!

## Relationship to other projects

### dbxtool

[dbxtool](https://github.com/rhboot/dbxtool) manages updates
to the Secure Boot database - `bootupd` will likely need to
perform any updates to the `shimx64.efi` binary
*before* `dbxtool.service` starts. But otherwise they are independent.

### fwupd

bootupd could be compared to [fwupd](https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/) which is
project that exists today to update hardware device firmware - things not managed
by e.g. `apt/zypper/yum/rpm-ostree update` today.

fwupd comes as a UEFI binary today, so bootupd would actually take care of updating fwupd itself.

The end result is that a system administrator would have 3 projects to monitor
(one for hardware devices and 2 for the bootloader and OS state) but each
would be clearly focused on its domain and handle it well. This stands
in contrast with e.g. having an RPM `%post` script try to regenerate the BIOS MBR.
fwupd comes as a UEFI binary today, so bootupd *could* take care of updating `fwupd`
but today fwupd handles that itself. So it's likely that bootupd would only take
care of GRUB and shim. See discussion in [this issue](https://github.com/coreos/bootupd/issues/1).

### systemd bootctl

[systemd bootctl](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/bootctl.1.html) can update itself;
this project would probably just proxy that if we detect systemd-boot is in use.

## Other goals

One idea is that bootupd could help support [redundant bootable disks](https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker/issues/581).
For various reasons it doesn't really work to try to use RAID1 for an entire disk; the ESP must be handled
specially. `bootupd` could learn how to synchronize multiple EFI system partitions from a primary.

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