Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [SeaBIOS] [PATCH 0/8] option rom loading overhaul.

[Gleb Natapov]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 08:59:48PM -0500, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:48:20AM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > I think we have two ways to view firmware.  The first would be to treat  
> > guest firmware as part of the guest.  What that means it that we should  
> > store all firmware in an nvram file, migrate the nvram file during  
> > migration
> [...]
> > The other option would be to treat guest firmware as part of the machine  
> > state.
> 
> How about mixing the two?  Store the firmware in an nvram file and
> migrate it during migration, but clear the nvram and reload the
> firmware on each start-up and qemu reset.
> 
That's precisely what I propose.

> [...]
> >The second mechanism is  
> > appealing from an ease of use perspective but the semantics of doing a  
> > live migration and getting a different firmware after reset/shutdown is  
> > rather scary from a support perspective.
> 
> I'm not sure I see the problem with upgrading firmware on a reboot.  I
> think it would be a pretty severe bug if a new firmware broke the OS
> or if an OS was heavily dependent on a specific firmware across
> reboots.  After all, normal users update their bios and reboot into
> pre-existing OSs all the time.
> 
Exactly.

--
                        Gleb.