Re: [regression, bisected] x86: efi: Pass boot services variable info to runtime code

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>]

* Russ Anderson <rja@sgi.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:32:09PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > On Thu, 2013-05-30 at 17:28 -0500, Russ Anderson wrote:
> > > On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:21:53PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2013-05-30 at 17:17 -0500, Russ Anderson wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > That's a great idea.  This patch moves the QueryVariableInfo()
> > > > > call from bootime to runtime, in efi_late_init().  The attached
> > > > > patch is consistent with the UEFI spec and avoids the problem.
> > > > 
> > > > No, that defeats the entire point of the original patch.
> > > 
> > > How so?  It is still calling QueryVariableInfo()
> > > before the data is used.
> > 
> > We want to know how much space is used by variables that aren't visible
> > at runtime.
> 
> We want to boot.  We could boot up through 3.9-rc7.
> 
> Knowing how much space is used by variables that aren't
> visible at runtime it moot if you can't boot.

Exactly - fixing a boot regression is _WAY_ more important than pretty 
much any other concern.

and the boot breakage is not limited to UV systems - the thread mentioned 
a couple of other systems as well.

So it's an absolute no-brainer that this change should be reverted or 
fixed via your patch.

Once a safer mechanism is implemented to call QueryVariableInfo() earlier 
(Boris's patches?) the change can be reintroduced.

Thanks,

	Ingo