Re: [Qemu-arm] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 2/2] hw/arm/virt: Support firmware configuration with -blockdev

[Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>]

Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <philmd@redhat.com> writes:

> On 4/11/19 3:56 PM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> The ARM virt machines put firmware in flash memory.  To configure it,
>> you use -drive if=pflash,unit=0,... and optionally -drive
>> if=pflash,unit=1,...
>> 
>> Why two -drive?  This permits setting up one part of the flash memory
>> read-only, and the other part read/write.  It also makes upgrading
>> firmware on the host easier.  Below the hood, we get two separate
>> flash devices, because we were too lazy to improve our flash device
>> models to support sector protection.
>> 
>> The problem at hand is to do the same with -blockdev somehow, as one
>> more step towards deprecating -drive.
>> 
>> We recently solved this problem for x86 PC machines, in commit
>> ebc29e1beab.  See the commit message for design rationale.
>> 
>> This commit solves it for ARM virt basically the same way: new machine
>> properties pflash0, pflash1 forward to the onboard flash devices'
>> properties.  Requires creating the onboard devices in the
>> .instance_init() method virt_instance_init().  The existing code to
>> pick up drives defined with -drive if=pflash is replaced by code to
>> desugar into the machine properties.
>> 
>> There are a few behavioral differences, though:
>> 
>> * The flash devices are always present (x86: only present if
>>   configured)
>> 
>> * Flash base addresses and sizes are fixed (x86: sizes depend on
>>   images, mapped back to back below a fixed address)
>> 
>> * -bios configures contents of first pflash (x86: -bios configures ROM
>>    contents)
>> 
>> * -bios is rejected when first pflash is also configured with -machine
>>    pflash0=... (x86: bios is silently ignored then)
>
> Can we start deprecating the -bios command line option?
>
> Maybe on a per-architecture basis first.

I have no idea.

Perhaps we want to keep it as syntactic sugar for convenience.  Right
now it's something else: an ugly special case.

Of course, the name -bios is a bit PC-centric.  And even there it makes
less sense than it used to.

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