RE: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Enable Option ROM support in Guest BIOS

["Shan, Haitao" <haitao.shan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Takebe San,

For the empty option ROM case, do you mean that you can not see any contents by 
reading the PCI expansion ROM bar address? Or they are indeed empty?
I have met a problem when developing the patches; I can not read any contents 
from expansion ROM bar. I wonder whether they are the same problem.

Shan Haitao

-----Original Message-----
From: Akio Takebe [mailto:takebe_akio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 2008年11月25日 8:35
To: Shan, Haitao; 'Keir Fraser'
Cc: 'xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Enable Option ROM support in Guest BIOS

Hi, Shan

>
>Note: There is no support for booting from SCSI disk now. Since guest BIOS 
>lacks support for that. Please see the comments below.
>//--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>// BIOS Boot Specification 1.0.1 compatibility
>//
>// Very basic support for the BIOS Boot Specification, which allows expansion
>// ROMs to register themselves as boot devices, instead of just stealing the
>// INT 19h boot vector.
>//
>// This is a hack: to do it properly requires a proper PnP BIOS and we aren't
>// one; we just lie to the option ROMs to make them behave correctly.
>// We also don't support letting option ROMs register as bootable disk
>// drives (BCVs), only as bootable devices (BEVs).
>//
>// http://www.phoenix.com/en/Customer+Services/White+Papers-Specs/pc+industry
>+specifications.htm
>//--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
We have also worked for enabling option ROM.
I and Kouya made the patch for supporting BCV. And we could boot HVM 
guest from SAN storage. (please see my presentation of XenSummit Tokyo)

I'll check your patch and remake the patch soon.

BTW, I found some problems, they are:
- Some device require services that are not supported by ROMBIOS.
  (I think updating ROMBIOS to the latest bochs is better.)
- Some devcies have empty option ROM or option ROM for EFI.
  (e.g. NIC cards)

Best Regards,

Akio Takebe


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