Why is /boot/efi on RAID unsupported?

[vpodzime]

https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/wiki/PluginFlag:esp-not-found#causes where fwupdmgr update sends me in

WARNING: UEFI ESP partition not detected or configured
  See https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/wiki/PluginFlag:esp-not-found for more information.

mentions

EFI system partition is a member of a RAID array

as one of the reasons why UEFI ESP may be not detected. Having /boot/efi on RAID is a good practice and should actually be recommended. It's sad that it's not supported.

And it is unclear why that is the case. UDisks definitely provides information about the RAID member partitions and on systems where one of the standard mount points (/boot/efi in my case) is used, it shouldn't even be necessary to query UDisks.

[hughsie]

Having /boot/efi on RAID is a good practice and should actually be recommended

Hardware RAID or software RAID?

[hughsie]

Can you get the same output with the main branch or Fedora 36 with 1.8.7 installed? There are quite a few fixes in the ESP code since then.

[em-winterschon]

Here's the output from Fedora 37, also using mdadm based RAID-1 on 2x NVMe.

fwupdtool esp-list --verbose
19:21:24.402 FuDebug              Verbose debugging enabled (on console 1)
19:21:24.403 GLib-GIO             Using cross-namespace EXTERNAL authentication (this will deadlock if server is GDBus < 2.73.3)
19:21:24.404 GLib-GIO             Using cross-namespace EXTERNAL authentication (this will deadlock if server is GDBus < 2.73.3)
19:21:24.414 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p5, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.415 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p5, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.416 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p3, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.417 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p2, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.418 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p1, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.419 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p4, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.420 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p2, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.422 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p4, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.423 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p3, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.424 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p1, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.425 FuContext            no volumes of type c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
19:21:24.436 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p5, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.437 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p5, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.438 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p3, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.439 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p2, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.440 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p1, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.441 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p4, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.442 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p2, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.445 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p4, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.446 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme0n1p3, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.447 FuVolume             device /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/nvme1n1p1, type: a19d880f-05fc-4d3b-a006-743f0f84911e, internal: 1, fs: linux_raid_member
19:21:24.449 FuContext            no volumes of type ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7
No ESP or BDP found

And the output from udisks showing the separate EFI partition with vfat mounted at /boot/efi.

udisksctl info -b /dev/md123
/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/md123:
  org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block:
    Configuration:              [('fstab', {'fsname': <b'UUID=D032-9542'>, 'dir': <b'/boot/efi'>, 'type': <b'vfat'>, 'opts': <b'umask=0077,shortname=winnt'>, 'freq': <0>, 'passno': <2>})]
    CryptoBackingDevice:        '/'
    Device:                     /dev/md123
    DeviceNumber:               2427
    Drive:                      '/'
    HintAuto:                   false
    HintIconName:               
    HintIgnore:                 false
    HintName:                   
    HintPartitionable:          true
    HintSymbolicIconName:       
    HintSystem:                 true
    Id:                         by-id-md-name-localhost-live:boot_efi
    IdLabel:                    
    IdType:                     vfat
    IdUUID:                     D032-9542
    IdUsage:                    filesystem
    IdVersion:                  FAT32
    MDRaid:                     '/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/mdraid/22dbe900_931497ec_aaee43e9_4158f6bc'
    MDRaidMember:               '/'
    PreferredDevice:            /dev/md/boot_efi
    ReadOnly:                   false
    Size:                       537853952
    Symlinks:                   /dev/disk/by-id/md-name-localhost-live:boot_efi
                                /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-22dbe900:931497ec:aaee43e9:4158f6bc
                                /dev/disk/by-uuid/D032-9542
                                /dev/md/boot_efi
    UserspaceMountOptions:      
  org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Filesystem:
    MountPoints:        /boot/efi
    Size:               0

I've tried setting OverrideESPMountPoint=/boot/efi in /etc/fwupd/uefi_capsule.conf, as suggested on the wiki page, but it doesn't resolve the issue (either via restarting the service or rebooting the machine).

Versions are as follows:

rpm -qa | grep fwup
fwupd-efi-1.4-1.fc37.x86_64
fwupd-plugin-flashrom-1.8.10-2.fc37.x86_64
fwupd-plugin-uefi-capsule-data-1.8.10-2.fc37.x86_64
fwupd-1.8.10-2.fc37.x86_64

[hughsie]

doesn't resolve the issue

I don't think putting the EFI filesystem on RAID is a good idea, generally. I think if you want to do it anyway that's fine, but I think you'll have to find the fix.

[vpodzime]

So something like --ignore-raid-check?

[hughsie]

Nah, just making OverrideESPMountPoint=/boot/efi work.