[SeaBIOS] [PATCH] [Seabios] Over 4GB address ranges for 64bit PCI BARs

Alexey Korolev alexey.korolev at endace.com
Mon Nov 8 04:35:38 CET 2010


Hi,
> Hi.
> The current BAR allocation doesn't check overflow and some patches
> are floating around which aren't merged yet.
> There are several issues.
> 
> - overflow check
>   This should be fixed.
>   Some patches are proposed. None hasn't been merged yet.
>   Your patch also addresses this issue.
>   http://www.seabios.org/pipermail/seabios/2010-July/000794.html
>   http://www.seabios.org/pipermail/seabios/2010-October/001089.html

Right. It would be great if the fix get included in seabios/qemu. 

Update: I've seen today's message from Kevin. He is going to merge your
patch. So it will be good news for us. 


> - >4GB 64bit bar allocation
>   Your patche tries to address this issue. But it breaks PCI-to-PCI
>   bridge filtering support.
Hmm, it is quite possible, as we don't know a lot about seabios PCI-to-PCI bridge filtering support.
Just out of curiosity: what is the issue?

>   If the BAR size is huge (or there are too many BARs), the bar can't
>   be allocated under 4G. So several persons want seabios to allocate
>   such BARs at >4GB area complaining that OS can't use BARs that seabios
>   didn't assigned.
> 
>   Others think such BAR can be left unallocated.
>   Seabios role is to setup minimal basic environment for bootloader
>   to boot OS, 64bit bar allocation is beyond it's role.
>   bootloader/rombios usually doesn't handle BARs that is allocated
>   beyond 4GB, and Modern OSes can re-arrange PCI bar allocation itself.
>   So 64bit bar allocation support wouldn't be needed.
> 
>   I'm not sure if there is enough demand to support 64bit BAR allocation
>   and if Kevin will accept it or not. Consensus is needed.
>   What OS are you using?
> 
For us >4GB allocation is welcome but not critical, because we mainly
use Linux versions 2.6.18 and newer. We've tested the seabios without
assignment of the regions which do not fit in first 32bit and it appears
to work fine. So for us 64bit bar allocation support wouldn't be needed.

It is possible that people will use an ancient version of Linux, but the
probability of this event is very low.


Thanks,
Alexey




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