Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] hw/isa/lpc_ich9: inject SMI on all VCPUs if APM_STS == 'Q'

[Paolo Bonzini]

> I guess that's what the next paragraph is about:
> 
> > - we could have another magic 0xB2 value, which is implemented directly
> > in QEMU and sets 0xB3 to a magic value.  Then OVMF can invoke it
> > after SMBASE relocation and SMM IPL (so as not to crash on old QEMUs)
> > to detect the new feature.  It can fail to start if using traditional
> > AP and the new feature is not there.
> 
> Please explain in more detail. If I write to 0xB2 (by invoking the
> Trigger() method or somehow else), then on old QEMU's that will raise a
> sync / unicast SMI. The SMI handler in edk2 will run, but no request
> parameters will have been set up by OVMF, so the SMI handler will do...
> no clue what.

It should hopefully do nothing.  A spurious SMI (such as the one caused
by the write to 0xB2) should not crash OVMF.

SMBASE relocation uses IPIs, so my hope was to use the
SmmCpuFeaturesSmmRelocationComplete hook.

> My preference is fw_cfg ATM. It provides a prove, flexible and
> extensible interface (it's easy to add new files for future features).
> If we expect more knobs in the area, I can modify my proposal to use
> "etc/smi/broadcast", so we can add "etc/smi/XXXX" later.

Did you know there are 16 entries only for fw_cfg files? :)  And we're
using already 20 in the worst case:

    genroms/linuxboot.bin
    genroms/kvmvapic.bin
    NVDIMM_DSM_MEM_FILE
    "etc/smbios/smbios-tables"
    "etc/smbios/smbios-anchor"
    "etc/acpi/tables"
    "etc/table-loader"
    ACPI_BUILD_TPMLOG_FILE
    ACPI_BUILD_RSDP_FILE
    "etc/e820"
    "etc/msr_feature_control"
    "etc/reserved-memory-end"
    "etc/pvpanic-port"
    "etc/boot-menu-wait"
    "bootsplash.jpg"
    "etc/boot-fail-wait"
    "etc/igd-opregion"
    "etc/igd-bdsm-size"
    "etc/extra-pci-roots"
    "bootorder"

Therefore, so close to the release I'm a bit worried about doing
changes to fw_cfg or adding more fw_cfg files.  Though we just got
rid of one file for the number of CPUs, so I guess we might not care.

> Do you have any specific arguments against fw_cfg? As I suggested in my
> previous email, with fw_cfg I can implement the change in OVMF such that
> the default behavior wouldn't change -- the default delivery would
> remain relaxed, and the broadcast wouldn't be requested, unless the
> fw_cfg file told OVMF otherwise.
> 
> > By the way, in case OVMF needs to use SmmSwDispatch in the future, I
> > would make QEMU use broadcast behavior for all values in the 0x10-0xff
> > range, or something like that.
> 
> Are we talking control/command (0xB2) or scratch/data (0xB3) register
> values? My patches currently use the scratch/data register to provide
> the hint to QEMU; that register is less likely to interfere with
> anything the SMM core in edk2 does.

Sorry I confused the two registers.  0xb3 is more or less unused as far
as I can see indeed.

Paolo