Re: [PATCH] tools/firmware: use a canned config for seabios

[Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@citrix.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wei Liu [mailto:wei.liu2@citrix.com]
> Sent: 24 March 2017 11:47
> To: Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@citrix.com>
> Cc: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org; Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@citrix.com>;
> Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>
> Subject: Re: [PATCH] tools/firmware: use a canned config for seabios
> 
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 05:03:09PM +0000, Paul Durrant wrote:
> > The use of seabios defconfig kills boot performance of Windows guests
> > because the default is for the int13 handler to use PIO when accessing
> > the emulated IDE device.
> >
> > By instead using a canned configuration with the ATA settings overridden
> > to enable DMA access (and also wider PIO) boot performance is markedly
> > improved without the need to use a different (and possibly not supported)
> > device model.
> >
> > This patch adds the canned configuration into tools/firmware and modifies
> > the Makefile rule to copy it into place.
> >
> 
> I think at some point someone (you?) tried to change the default
> upstream, what was the outcome?
> 

Yes I tried that. The maintainers nacked the patch.

> I'm not against shipping a default config, but that wouldn't benefit all
> the distros that use their own seabios packages.
> 

No, but the status quo sucks. One hopes distros building their own Xen packages already choose a better firmware config. This patch makes the config for those rolling their own firmware better (and I suspect that's quite a few folks).

  Paul

> Wei.

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