Re: BGRT Pointer in System RAM

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Josh Triplett <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 04:08:13PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Josh Triplett <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 01:28:36PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Interesting.  My BGRT says:
>> >>
>> >> [028h 0040   8]                Image Address : 0D06801800000001
>> >>
>> >> If I reverse the high and low 32-bit dwords, then I get an address in
>> >> system RAM.
>> >
>> > Does that address in RAM start with a BMP header?
>>
>> No idea.  I'd presumably have to modify the driver to find out --
>> otherwise something else will overwrite it.
>
> You could boot with a mem= command-line argument that reserves that
> memory.

I'll see what I can do.

>
>> > Because that would be *special*.  I don't think it's worth trying to
>> > cope with that bug; better to just write off the BGRT as invalid if the
>> > BIOS can't get endianness right.
>> >
>> > In theory we could guess at that bug if the unmangled address points to
>> > a location in RAM starting with a BMP header.  In practice, let's not; a
>> > missing BGRT is a purely cosmetic issue, and BIOS vendors can learn to
>> > get that one right if they want to see their logo during Linux boot.
>> > This won't break fastboot support, it just breaks fancy crossfades from
>> > the BIOS logo to a Linux desktop or splash.
>>
>> FWIW, the address that my BIOS gives is non-canonical.  Maybe that's
>> good enough.
>
> What do you mean by "non-canonical".

Brainfart.  I'm confusing physical and virtual addresses.  More
usefully, the bogus address from my BIOS is too large -- it's way
above the highest e820 spot (and I'm pretty sure it exceeds the
maximum address that my CPU can address).  Maybe that would be a
decent heuristic to use to avoid trying to follow the pointer.

>
>> > So, a "firmware bug" message in dmesg seems sufficent for that case.  We
>> > do need to handle the case of a valid pointer into memory that e820
>> > calls system RAM, as well as the case of a valid pointer into memory
>> > reserved for the BIOS or similar, but not the case of an invalid
>> > pointer.
>>
>> Is the efi_bgrt code called early enough that data in system RAM will
>> still be there?
>
> In theory, it should always point to data in EFI's "reserved until after
> boot time" memory.
>
> - Josh Triplett
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