Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v3 00/04] HVM firmware passthrough

["Charles Arnold" <carnold@xxxxxxxx>]

I haven't seen any activity on this feature.  Is it still planned to be 
included in Xen 4.3?

- Charles

On Wed, 2012-05-23 at 14:37 +0000, 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Currently two types of firmware information are recognized and processed
> in the HVMLOADER though this could be extended.
> 
> 1. SMBIOS: The SMBIOS table building code will attempt to retrieve (for
> predefined set of structure types) any passed in structures. If a match is
> found the passed in table will be used overriding the default values. In
> addition, the SMBIOS code will also enumerate and load any vendor defined
> structures (in the range of types 128 - 255) that as are passed in. See the
> hvm_defs.h header for information on the format of this block.
> 2. ACPI: Static and secondary descriptor tables can be added to the set of
> ACPI table built by HVMLOADER. The ACPI builder code will enumerate passed 
> in
> tables and add them at the end of the secondary table list. See the 
> hvm_defs.h
> header for information on the format of this block.
> 
> There are 4 patches in the series:
> 01 - Add HVM definitions header for firmware passthrough support.
> 02 - Xen control tools support for loading the firmware blocks.
> 03 - Passthrough support for SMBIOS.
> 04 - Passthrough support for ACPI.
> 
> Note this is version 3 of this patch set. Some of the differences:
>  - Generic module support removed, overall functionality was simplified.
>  - Use of xenstore to supply firmware passthrough information to HVMLOADER.
>  - Fixed issues pointed out in the SMBIOS processing code.
>  - Created defines for the SMBIOS handles in use and switched to using
>    the xenstore values in the new hvm_defs.h file.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Ross Philipson <ross.philipson@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 



_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel