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From: David Gibson <dwg@au1.ibm.com>
To: Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>
Cc: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>,
	Avik Sil <aviksil@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Alex Graf <agraf@suse.de>
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] nvram and boot order
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:01:07 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20121017010107.GZ4640@truffula.fritz.box> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <874nluqaeh.fsf@codemonkey.ws>

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 06:12:22PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> writes:
> 
> > On 16 October 2012 20:55, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> We discussed nvram and it's interaction with boot order in today's KVM
> >> call.  Here's the outcome.  This list is completely incremental so it's
> >> fine to start with 1-4, for instance, as long as we eventually get to 6.
> >>
> >> Today, on x86, we implement up to (5) but we don't persist NVRAM.
> >>
> >> 1) We should modify QEMUMachine to specify that a machine does not want
> >>    a default boot order.  Ideally, this would be done by adding a new
> >>    default_boot_order that is set to "cad" explicitly in all machines
> >>    allowing a machine to remove that entry.  At any rate, this allows a
> >>    machine to receive a NULL boot order when -boot isn't used and take an
> >>    appropriate action accordingly.
> >>
> >> 2) In the absence of a persistent NVRAM, a ephemeral NVRAM should be
> >>    generated with a reasonable default boot order.
> >>
> >> 3) In the absence of -boot or ,bootindex=, the system should boot from
> >>    order specified in NVRAM.
> >>
> >> 4) If -boot is specified, the parameter should alter the contents of
> >>    NVRAM to change the boot order to what is specified by -boot.
> >>
> >> 5) If ,bootorder is specified, it should take predence over -boot.
> >>
> >> 6) ,bootorder= should also alter the contents of NVRAM to determine the
> >>    boot order.
> >
> > What's the rationale for 6? It seems a bit odd for a command line
> > option to randomly mangle the NVRAM...
> 
> The use case is to have a consistent view of the boot order within the
> guest and in the host while still having the ability to edit the
> persistent boot order within the guest.
> 
> If you look at my other note in this thread, one way to achieve this is
> to have the boot order "owned" by QEMU with the guest making fw_cfg
> calls to modify it.  It would be persisted in a portion of the NVRAM
> reserved for QEMU's use.

That's not necessarily compatible with established guest visible
platform NVRAM semantics.

-- 
David Gibson			| I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au	| minimalist, thank you.  NOT _the_ _other_
				| _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson

  reply	other threads:[~2012-10-17  1:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-10-16 19:55 [Qemu-devel] nvram and boot order Anthony Liguori
2012-10-16 20:07 ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2012-10-16 20:55   ` Anthony Liguori
2012-10-26  6:27     ` David Gibson
2012-10-17 13:48   ` Gleb Natapov
2012-10-16 20:13 ` Peter Maydell
2012-10-16 23:12   ` Anthony Liguori
2012-10-17  1:01     ` David Gibson [this message]
2012-10-17  0:58 ` David Gibson
2012-10-17 18:17   ` Anthony Liguori
2012-10-18  0:09     ` David Gibson
2012-10-18  1:18       ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2012-10-18  6:32         ` Alexander Graf
2012-10-19  8:24           ` David Gibson
2012-10-19  8:40             ` Alexander Graf
2012-10-25  4:14               ` David Gibson
2012-10-19 14:21             ` Anthony Liguori
2012-10-19 14:36               ` Peter Maydell
2012-10-19 18:11               ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2012-10-19 17:29           ` Blue Swirl

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