Re: [PATCH v3 10/10] x86, efi: EFI boot stub support

From: Maarten Lankhorst
Date: Thu Sep 22 2011 - 07:43:26 EST


Hey,

On 09/21/2011 02:10 PM, Matt Fleming wrote:
> From: Matt Fleming <matt.fleming@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> There is currently a large divide between kernel development and the
> development of EFI boot loaders. The idea behind this patch is to give
> the kernel developers full control over the EFI boot process. As
> H. Peter Anvin put it,
>
> "The 'kernel carries its own stub' approach been very successful in
> dealing with BIOS, and would make a lot of sense to me for EFI as
> well."
>
> This patch introduces an EFI boot stub that allows an x86 bzImage to
> be loaded and executed by EFI firmware. The bzImage appears to the
> firmware as an EFI application. Luckily there are enough free bits
> within the bzImage header so that it can masquerade as an EFI
> application, thereby coercing the EFI firmware into loading it and
> jumping to its entry point. The beauty of this masquerading approach
> is that both BIOS and EFI boot loaders can still load and run the same
> bzImage, thereby allowing a single kernel image to work in any boot
> environment.
>
> The EFI boot stub supports multiple initrds, but they must exist on
> the same partition as the bzImage. Command-line arguments for the
> kernel can be appended after the bzImage name when run from the EFI
> shell, e.g.
>
> Shell> bzImage console=ttyS0 root=/dev/sdb initrd=initrd.img
>
> Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Mike Waychison <mikew@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Matthew Garrett <mjg@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Matt Fleming <matt.fleming@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> v3:
> - Fix following warnings when compiling CONFIG_EFI_STUB=n
>
> arch/x86/boot/tools/build.c: In function âmainâ:
> arch/x86/boot/tools/build.c:138:24: warning: unused variable âpe_headerâ
> arch/x86/boot/tools/build.c:138:15: warning: unused variable âfile_szâ
>
> - As reported by Matthew Garrett, some Apple machines have GOPs that
> don't have hardware attached. We need to weed these out by
> searching for ones that handle the PCIIO protocol.
>
> - Don't allocate memory if no initrds are on cmdline
> - Don't trust image->load_options_size
>
> - Maarten Lankhorst suggested:
> - Don't strip first argument when booted from efibootmgr
> - Don't allocate too much memory for cmdline
> - Don't update cmdline_size, the kernel considers it read-only
> - Don't accept '\n' for initrd names
Even if load_options_size is not always completely reliable, could you at least prevent reading more than image->load_options_size? Code below doesn't seem to do that currently..

Thanks,
Maarten
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