Re: [SeaBIOS] allocation zone extensions for the firmware linker/loader

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 06/05/17 18:02, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 03, 2017 at 09:36:23AM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > On 06/02/17 17:45, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > > The patches can cause linker/loader breakage when old firmware is booted
> > > on new QEMU. However, that's no problem (it's nothing new), the next
> > > release of QEMU should bundle the new firmware binaries as always.
> >
> > Dave made a good point (which I should have realized myself, really!),
> > namely if you launch old fw on old qemu, then migrate the guest to a new
> > qemu and then reboot the guest on the target host, within the migrated
> > VM, things will break.
> >
> > So that makes this approach dead in the water.
> >
> > Possible mitigations I could think of:
> > Make it machine type dependent. Complicated (we don't usually bind
> >
> > ACPI generation to machine types) and wouldn't help existing devices.
> > Let the firmware negotiate these extensions. Very complicated (new
> >
> > fw-cfg files are needed for negotiation) and wouldn't help existing devices.
>
> This last option *shouldn't* be complicated. If it is something's wrong.
>
> Maybe we made a mistake when we added etc/smi/*features*.
>
> It's not too late to move these to etc/*features* for new
> machine types if we want to and if you can do the firmware
> work. Then you'd just take out a bit and be done with it.
>
> I don't insist on doing the ACPI thing now but I do think
> infrastructure for negotiating extensions should be there.

Different drivers in the firmware would need to negotiate different
questions / features with QEMU independently of each other. The "thing"
in OVMF that negotiates (and uses) the SMI broadcast is very-very
different and separate from the "thing" in OVMF that handles the ACPI
linker/loader script.

As one example, the first "thing" mentioned above is not even built into
ArmVirtQemu (only into OVMF, i.e. x86), while the second "thing" is
built into both aarch64 and x86 firmware.

So, I think we couldn't share the same fw_cfg files (if they needed
write access & lock-down too, i.e. actual negotiation from the firmware)
between wildly unrelated features.

The virtio feature negotiation is different because each device gets its
own negotiation, and that maps very well to UEFI concepts too.

BTW, do we have a specific concern relating to the number of fw_cfg
files? That count can now be raised from machine type to machine type,
but Paolo didn't seem to like raising the current value (or maybe I
misunderstood him):

http://mid.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]

... Also, above I wrote, with regard to feature negotiation, that it
"wouldn't help existing devices". By that I mean this:

Consider the NOACPI content hint as an example. If the firmware doesn't
negotiate it (before selecting and downloading the ACPI payload), then
QEMU cannot generate the NOACPI content hint. In turn QEMU must keep the
OVMF SDT Header Probe suppressor (those paddings and AML additions) enabled.

But, for the QEMU developers it means that the suppressor code has to be
kept around forever, for compatibility with old machine types. And if
you do that, then why add a negotiable NOACPI hint at all? That would
just further complicate device code (because now you have to generate
two different AML payloads), where the old one (the one with the
explicit suppressor) would work just fine "forever".

Thanks,
Laszlo