Setup Sprout for Fedora without Secure Boot

Prerequisites

Modern Fedora release: tested on Fedora Workstation 42 and 43
EFI System Partition mounted on /boot/efi (the default)
ext4 or FAT32/exFAT formatted /boot partition

Step 1: Base Installation

Download the latest sprout.efi release from the GitHub releases page. For x86_64 systems, download the sprout-x86_64.efi file, and for ARM systems, download the sprout-aarch64.efi file. Copy the downloaded sprout.efi file to /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/sprout.efi on your EFI System Partition.

Additionally, you will want to install the edk2-ext4 package, which provides the ext4 filesystem support for Sprout.

# Install the edk2-ext4 package which provides ext4 support for Sprout.
$ sudo dnf install edk2-ext4
# Create a directory for sprout drivers.
$ sudo mkdir -p /boot/efi/sprout/drivers
# For x86_64 systems, copy the ext4x64.efi driver to the sprout drivers directory.
$ sudo cp /usr/share/edk2/drivers/ext4x64.efi /boot/efi/sprout/drivers/ext4.efi
# For ARM64 systems, copy the ext4aa64.efi driver to the sprout drivers directory.
$ sudo cp /usr/share/edk2/drivers/ext4aa64.efi /boot/efi/sprout/drivers/ext4.efi

Step 2: Configure Sprout

Since Fedora uses the BLS specification, you can use the bls generator to autoconfigure Sprout for Fedora.

Write the following file to /boot/efi/sprout.toml:

# sprout configuration: version 1
version = 1

# load an EFI driver for ext4.
[drivers.ext4]
path = "\\sprout\\drivers\\ext4.efi"

# global options.
[options]
# enable autoconfiguration by detecting bls enabled
# filesystems and generating boot entries for them.
autoconfigure = true

Step 3, Option 1: Configure GRUB to load Sprout (recommended)

You can configure GRUB to add a boot entry for Sprout, so you can continue to use GRUB without interruption.

GRUB needs to be configured with the chainloader module to load Sprout.

x86_64

# Install x86_64 GRUB modules.
$ sudo dnf install grub2-efi-x64-modules
# Copy x86_64 GRUB modules to /boot/grub2 for use by GRUB if it isn't installed already.
$ [ ! -d /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi ] && sudo cp -r /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi

ARM64

# Install ARM64 GRUB modules.
$ sudo dnf install grub2-efi-aa64-modules
# Copy ARM64 GRUB modules to /boot/grub2 for use by GRUB if it isn't installed already.
$ [ ! -d /boot/grub2/arm64-efi ] && sudo cp -r /usr/lib/grub/arm64-efi /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi

You will need to find the UUID of your EFI System Partition. You can do this by running the following command:

$ grep "/boot/efi" /etc/fstab | awk '{print $1}' | awk -F '=' '{print $2}'
SAMPLE-VALUE

The GRUB configuration for Sprout is as follows, replace SAMPLE-VALUE with the UUID of your EFI System Partition:

menuentry 'Sprout' $menuentry_id_option 'sprout' {
        insmod part_gpt
        insmod fat
        insmod chain
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root SAMPLE-VALUE
        chainloader /EFI/BOOT/sprout.efi
}

You can append this to /etc/grub.d/40_custom and run the following command to update your configuration:

$ sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

To update your GRUB configuration.

Make sure to update your GRUB environment to show the menu:

$ sudo grub2-editenv - set menu_auto_hide=0

You may now reboot your system and select Sprout from the GRUB menu.

Step 3, Option 2: Configure your EFI firmware for Sprout

You can configure your EFI boot menu to show Sprout as an option.

To do so, please find the partition device of your EFI System Partition and run the following:

$ sudo efibootmgr -d /dev/esp_partition_here -C -L 'Sprout' -l '\EFI\BOOT\sprout.efi'

This will add a new entry to your EFI boot menu called Sprout that will boot Sprout with your configuration.

Now if you boot into your UEFI firmware, you should see Sprout as an option to boot.

3.9 KiB Raw Permalink Blame History