Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0 of 8] tools: libx[cl]: support alternative HVM firmware

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 18:29 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Ian Campbell writes ("[Xen-devel] [PATCH 0 of 8] tools: libx[cl]: support 
> alternative HVM firmware"):
> > The following series makes it possible to use any ELF file as the
> > initial HVM domain firmware and begins to setup libxl to cope with
> > this.
> 
> Thanks, for patches 1-7 (revised version, for no.1):
> 
> Acked-by: Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Committed-by: Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> How close are we to making the switch to seabios for new qemu ?

I think strictly speaking we already have -- libxl in current
xen-unstable.hg will tell hvmloader to use seabios already and hvmloader
will barf unless you fed it a seabios binary at build time. The
http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/QEMUUpstream wiki page covers acquiring all
the necessary bits.

I suspect your question was more "when will it be properly integrated
with patches accepted into both projects".

Initially I started working on an approach where SeaBIOS was loaded
directly as the hvm firmware and did all the machine setup (PCI
enumeration, ACPI table generation, chipset init etc etc). I had this
approach working but was not happy with the amount of intrusion into
SeaBIOS code.

I've now reset and am trying the hvmloader->SeaBIOS approach. This is
progressing well and the set of patches required on the SeaBIOS side is
far smaller (without an equivalent growth on the hvmloader side since
most of this stuff is already there for rombios). I've now changed my
mind and think this is likely the best approach.

I hope to get an initial set of patches to both projects for this second
approach sent out soon (either this week or early next).

Ian.


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