Re: Extending boot protocol & bzImage for paravirt_ops

H. Peter Anvin
2007-06-01T21:40:43Z

Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
>
>> +Protocol: 2.07+
>> +
>> + A pointer to data that is specific to hardware subarch
>>
>
> Do we care particularly? If 8 bytes is enough for the subarch, do we
> care whether its a pointer or literal? After all, this is just a private
> channel between the bootloader and some subarch-specific piece of code
> in the kernel.
>

I see two options: either we make it a pointer *and a length* so that a
loader can reshuffle it at will (that also implies no absolute pointers
within the data), or it's an opaque cookie anyway.

-hpa