[coreboot] patch: add zero fill command option to lar

[ron minnich]

On Feb 9, 2008 1:06 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
<c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net> wrote:

> If I read the code correctly, the command will try to fill the first
> occurrence of free space in the lar, not the biggest one. That means we
> might have to call it multiple times.

hmm. I obviously did not think of this.

> And a general problem with the code: If it finds the offset of the first
> empty area, it checks whether the area is big enough. If not, it does
> not search for another empty area, but returns instead with an error.

Actually, I think as written it is broken for the general case of lots
of empty spots. It should just look for the room left from start of
empty space to next LAR header. It's just that I have never had a LAR
that has more than one block of empty space, and that empty space is
always at the gap before the bootblock.

How about this. I'd like to commit now, and then fix this later, as I
really need this code in there for speed and it works fine with all
"fresh" images built with v3.

> Should we really call this "zerofill"?

"emptyfill"? I'll let it go for now but you make  good point.


> Acked-by: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>

OK, this is clearly a work in progress but even in this form it is so
useful I'm going to commit it with a note, "This needs more work", and
with luck someone else will improve it once we need it improved -- the
basic structure is there.

ron