Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v4 00/04] HVM firmware passthrough

[Ross Philipson <Ross.Philipson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk [mailto:konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 9:12 PM
> To: Ross Philipson
> Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v4 00/04] HVM firmware passthrough
> 
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 06:31:58PM -0500, Ross Philipson wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk [mailto:konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx]
> > > Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 2:46 PM
> > > To: Ross Philipson
> > > Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v4 00/04] HVM firmware passthrough
> > >
> > > On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 01:55:10PM -0500, Ross Philipson wrote:
> > > > This patch series introduces support of loading external blocks of
> > > > firmware into a guest. These blocks can currently contain SMBIOS
> > > > and/or ACPI firmware information that is used by HVMLOADER to
> modify a
> > > > guests virtual firmware at startup. These modules are only used by
> > > HVMLOADER and are effectively discarded after HVMLOADER has
> completed.
> > > >
> > > > The domain building code in libxenguest is passed these firmware
> > > > blocks in the xc_hvm_build_args structure and loads them into the
> new
> > > > guest, returning the load address. The loading is done in what
> will
> > > > become the guests low RAM area just behind to load location for
> > > > HVMLOADER. After their use by HVMLOADER they are effectively
> > > > discarded. It is the caller's job to load the base address and
> length
> > > > values in xenstore using the paths defined in the new hvm_defs.h
> > > header so HVMLOADER can located the blocks.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Are there patches to plug this in the 'xl'?
> > >
> >
> > So far there are only patches to expose it at the xc layer. Nothing
> else
> > seems to use the xc_hvm_build() call (only xc_hvm_build_target_mem()).
> > Since the use of this feature seems dependent on a user's particular
> > needs, I am not sure how it could generically be built into xl. Any
> > suggestions are welcome though and I could post subsequent patches.
> 
> I was thinking something like this:
> 
> firmware="nvidia.bin"
> acpi_dsdt="acpi.dsdt"
>

You are talking about values in the config that libxl consumes (I am
not terribly familiar with libxl)? Yea I could do something like that.
I don't think in general anyone would override the entire DSDT (though
I could add that support if desired). So I would probably do something
like:

smbios_pt="smbios_structures.bin"
acpi_pt="acpi_tables.bin"

In the process should I switch libxl to call xc_hvm_build()
rather than xc_hvm_build_target_mem()? 
 
> ?
> >
> > Thanks
> > Ross

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