Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] efi: Fix EFI boot with kexec handover (KHO)

[Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 11:22:44PM +0000, Evangelos Petrongonas wrote:
> This patch series fixes a kernel panic that occurs when booting with
> both EFI and KHO (Kexec HandOver) enabled.
> 
> The issue arises because EFI's `reserve_regions()` clears all memory
> regions with `memblock_remove(0, PHYS_ADDR_MAX)` before rebuilding them
> from EFI data. This destroys KHO scratch regions that were set up early
> during device tree scanning, causing a panic as the kernel has no valid
> memory regions for early allocations.
> 
> The first patch introduces `is_kho_boot()` to allow early boot
> components to reliably detect if the kernel was booted via KHO-enabled
> kexec. The existing `kho_is_enabled()` only checks the command line and
> doesn't verify if an actual KHO FDT was passed.
> 
> The second patch modifies EFI's `reserve_regions()` to selectively
> remove only non-KHO memory regions when KHO is active, preserving the
> critical scratch regions while still allowing EFI to rebuild its memory
> map.
> 
> The patchset was developed/tested on arm64.
> 
> On a side note, I have noticed that `kho_populate()` calls
> `memblock_set_kho_scratch_only()`, but the `kho` cmdline option is
> not checked until much later. Therefore, memblock will use only the
> scratch regions that were passed from the outgoing kernel, even if the
> incoming kernel doesn't explicitly want that. I am not sure if this is
> done on purpose, but in any case we can discuss this in another patch,
> as it is orthogonal to this one.

kho_populate runs earlier than we parse the command line, so there is an
implicit assumption that we are going through KHO-enabled kexec if FDT was
passed to the new kernel.

I believe the best way is to document that and make it more explicit that
kho command line parameter only affects the "out" part.
 
> Main Changes in v2 (smaller changes can be found in individual patches):
>     - Introduce is_kho_boot()
>     - Replaced manual loop with for_each_mem_region macro
> 
> Evangelos Petrongonas (2):
>   kexec: introduce is_kho_boot()
>   efi: Support booting with kexec handover (KHO)
> 
>  drivers/firmware/efi/efi-init.c | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++----
>  include/linux/kexec_handover.h  |  6 ++++++
>  kernel/kexec_handover.c         | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
>  3 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.47.3

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.