[Qemu-devel] Re: [SeaBIOS] [PATCH 0/8] option rom loadingoverhaul.

[Gleb Natapov <gleb@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 01:17:23PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> >Does any OS (Windows?) depend on the tables the bios creates (e.g.
> >smbios)
> >for licensing? It would be ugly if Windows wants you to
> >re-activate after a reboot
> >following a migration to newer qemu version and therefore possibly
> >changed tables
> >due to newer bios.
> 
> Yes, and this is a good point.  ACPI table changes can absolutely
> cause re-activation.  If we migrate from 0.12 -> 0.13 and make major
> changes to the ACPI tables in 0.13, then it's very likely that will
> result in problems for Windows guests.
> 
On the contrary. This is very unlikely. Otherwise BIOS upgrade would
cause Windows reactivation.

> I really think that we need to snapshot the FW and store it with the
> guest state.  If we switch all FW to be allocated with
> qemu_ram_alloc() and we use an id mechanism, then this will Just
> Work for savevm based snapshots and live migration.  However, for it
> to work with -M pc-0.11 started from a cold boot, we need an nvram
> file.  We probably want to make available versioned nvram files from
> each release too.
> 
Yes, firmware should be part of machine description.

--
			Gleb.