[SeaBIOS] bootorder, ATA-SFF, AHCI and CSM; oh my!

Kevin O'Connor kevin at koconnor.net
Tue Jul 7 23:06:03 CEST 2015


On Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 08:59:58PM -0500, Jonathan A. Kollasch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've discovered a mess:
> 
>  - bootorder paths for ATA-SFF devices do not use the
>    channel/port-on-controller number in the path, instead they use a
>    volatile and unique-to-each-channel number that has no relation
>    to the actual arrangement of the hardware.
> 
>    For instance, on a MCP55-based machine (no AHCI, but plenty of
>    ATA-SFF channels/ports:
>    
>    The master drive on the PATA channel is (and should be, but is only
>    by coincidence) /pci at i0cf8/*@4/drive at 0/disk at 0 but the first SATA port
>    on /pci at i0cf8/*@5 is currently detected by SeaBIOS as something other
>    than /pci at i0cf8/*@5/drive at 0/disk at 0 (the drive@ number is something
>    like 2) and the second SATA port is something other than
>    /pci at i0cf8/*@5/drive at 1/disk at 0 (drive@ number is usually more like 3)
>    The /pci at i0cf8/*@5 controller only has two ports on it.

I agree the current code is incorrect.  However, I don't think it
requires changing the CSM or AHCI code.  I think the ATA code should
just track which controller number it is relative to the given PCI id
and pass that to bootprio_find_ata_device() instead of chanid.

>  - bootprio_find_ata_device() is shared between the ahci.c and ata.c
>    drivers.  This becomes interesting in a system using SeaBIOS as CSM
>    and/or having certain combinations of ATA-SFF and/or AHCI controllers.

I think the CSM code is just not capable of handling a system with
more than one ATA controller or with drives of a non-ATA type.  I
vaguely recall David saying something like that when he committed the
code.  (I think he was going to try and chase it down with the CSM
spec owners.)  So, I would just pass in the updated "chanid" to CSM
without worrying about the different behavior on secondary ATA
controllers.

>    (And why does the SeaBIOS CSM even have drivers in it?  I would have
>    thought it would be using the UEFI drivers...but maybe we had to
>    ExitBootServices() to work properly...)

I'm not sure, but I don't think it's valid to call back into UEFI
during the system runtime - only during the init phase.  (And, SeaBIOS
needs drivers through the lifetime of the system for old DOS apps.)

>  - Thus the chanid argument to csm_bootprio_ata() could be any of two
>    unrelated things:
> 
>    - the global-based index of a ata.c channel
>    - the controller-based port index of any of the ahci.c controllers in
>      the system
> 
> I've attached a patch that attempts to address the issue with the ata.c
> bootorder paths, but it doesn't really fix the actual problem.

Thanks.  Are you willing to respin a simpler version of the patch?

-Kevin



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