Re: [tip:x86/setup] x86, setup: "glove box" BIOS calls -- infrastructure

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Avi Kivity wrote:
> 
> kvm might help detecting these issues, but not in fixing them.  If you 
> isolate the BIOS, then you've prevented corruption, but you've also 
> prevented it from doing whatever it is it was supposed to do.  If you 
> give it access to memory and the rest of the system, then whatever evil 
> it has wrought affects the system.
> 
> You could try to allow the BIOS access to selected pieces of memory and 
> hardware, virtualizing the rest, but it seems to me it would be more 
> like a recipe for a giant headache that a solution.
> 

The main thing you could do is drop or virtualize memory accesses to RAM 
it should never access in the first place, like some BIOSes which 
scribble over random locations in low memory.

	-hpa