Re: [coreboot] Implementing or not implementing hacks for the OS (was: Change in coreboot[master]: ck804: hide IOAPIC base address in PCI_BASE_ADDRESS_1)

[David Hubbard]

Hi all,

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 2:03 PM, ron minnich  wrote:
> Paul, you missed part of the picture. Suppose we have a different
> kernel, which does not have the same bug as Linux has,and that,
> further, depends on that register being visible? We can't know that
> such OSes exist, but we do not know that they do not. We'd have to at
> the very least test some of them. We've always tried to avoid being
> Linux-centric in coreboot and for the most part have succeeded.
> Further, hidden registers create their own problems.
>
> This problem has no clear solution. I've always felt that in all
> cases, we should err on the side of opening up the hardware, and not
> hiding registers.
>
> ron

I checked with Paul briefly on IRC, I think we may be missing something
obvious here. IOAPIC support is pretty fundamental; maybe the ck804
brokenness is fixable? (I'm willing to dig in a little deeper and find out
what's going on here.)

If so then there would be no need to make a special case for it in
coreboot, right?

David