Re: vgabios and other guest related firmware

Avi Kivity
2008-01-02T09:36:47Z

Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belon wrote:
>
>> We also need to upload the ia64 firmware for kvm, and make it
>> available for users use. At least, we need to provide the binary.
>>
>
> beware that actually providing the binary without sources might be a problem
> for some distributions (like debian and derivatives like ubuntu).
>
> most likely getting the sources and a makefile which could be used to build
> the binary and copy it to the qemu/pc-bios/ directory, at release time or when
> the sources had been changed and it needs to be rebuilt, and for convenience
> so it can be distributed with the release tar.gz will be preferred.
>
> for hints on how to get that look at the Makefiles in the bios or vgabios top
> level directories and the top level Makefile
>
>

Note that we ship x86 binaries for two reasons:
- qemu does it that way, and we inherited it, before the need arose to
make modifications
- obscure tools are needed to build the binaries (iasl and dev86)

Since ia64 doesn't have these issues (is that right?) then we can
probably do a source-only release.

>> BTW, current ia64 binary has 2M size, is it OK to upload it to
>> kvm-source tree ?
>>
>
> if you are talking about the binary only, EFI BIOS from Intel, then it could
> be problematic (because of the free software guidelines of some distributions)
> and of course will need to have also some sort of README file clearly
> specifying that the license allows for re-distribution and can be used at least
> together with kvm (like the ELPIN vga bios was licensed for BOCHS)
>
> IMHO is probably better to use only the GPL version with sources and
> distribute that with kvm source packages and let the users or distributions
> to manage the distribution/installation of BLOBs otherwise as that keeps the
> lawyers from distracting us from the interesting technical issues.
>

I agree, let's avoid binary-only components if possible.

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function