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

[Anthony Liguori]

On 12/21/2009 01:32 AM, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> 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.
>    

There are some really ugly corner cases here.  For instance, guest is 
running and the user does a yum update which upgrades the qemu package.  
This includes laying down a new bios.

User eventually restarts guest, now we re-read BIOS and we're on a newer 
BIOS than the device model.  Badness ensues.

And more importantly, what is the end-user benefit of doing this?

Regards,

Anthony Liguori