[SeaBIOS] [PATCH 4/5] paravirt: Always prefer memory details from FW CFG over CMOS

[Rob Bradford]

On Wed, 2018-12-05 at 10:18 +0100, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 05:37:45PM +0000, Rob Bradford wrote:
> > If there is a QEMU FW CFG variable for memory available then always
> > use
> > it instead of CMOS. We cannot extract the values from E820 tables
> > yet as
> > that code assumes a working malloc.
> 
> Failed in testing.
> 

Thanks for trying it out.

> Try a guest with 4G RAM, seabios falls back to cmos.
> 
> Try a guest with q35 and 7G RAM, seabios thinks it has 3G of low mem
> even though it actually has 2G only.
> 

Ah, that is a really big problem I missed. I played around with various
size combinations but I was only interested in what was happening in
the booted kernel.

> Another problem is that you only get the total amout of memory here,
> not
> the mapping.
> 
> I think there is no way around scanning the e820 table (etc/e830
> fw_cfg
> file) for the ram entry with the zero start address to figure the
> amout
> of ram you have below 4G.
> 

The two options I see are: either modify the E820 code to make it
usable without the assumption that malloc is avalable or alternatively
add another FW config variable that has the low mem size - which is all
you care about in terms of early firmware as you're going to get all
the fine detail from the E820 table.

I'll take a look at the former as I think that would be preferable.

Cheers,

Rob

> cheers,
>   Gerd
>