On March 21, 2024 6:45:48 AM PDT, "Daniel P. Smith" <dpsm...@apertussolutions.com> wrote: >Hi Ard! > >On 2/15/24 02:56, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: >> On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 at 23:31, Ross Philipson <ross.philip...@oracle.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> From: Arvind Sankar <nived...@alum.mit.edu> >>> >>> There are use cases for storing the offset of a symbol in kernel_info. >>> For example, the trenchboot series [0] needs to store the offset of the >>> Measured Launch Environment header in kernel_info. >>> >> >> Why? Is this information consumed by the bootloader? > >Yes, the bootloader needs a standardized means to find the offset of the MLE >header, which communicates a set of meta-data needed by the DCE in order to >set up for and start the loaded kernel. Arm will also need to provide a >similar metadata structure and alternative entry point (or a complete rewrite >of the existing entry point), as the current Arm entry point is in direct >conflict with Arm DRTM specification. > >> I'd like to get away from x86 specific hacks for boot code and boot >> images, so I would like to explore if we can avoid kernel_info, or at >> least expose it in a generic way. We might just add a 32-bit offset >> somewhere in the first 64 bytes of the bootable image: this could >> co-exist with EFI bootable images, and can be implemented on arm64, >> RISC-V and LoongArch as well. > >With all due respect, I would not refer to boot params and the kern_info >extension designed by the x86 maintainers as a hack. It is the well-defined >boot protocol for x86, just as Arm has its own boot protocol around Device >Tree. > >We would gladly adopt a cross arch/cross image type, zImage and bzImage, means >to embedded meta-data about the kernel that can be discovered by a bootloader. >Otherwise, we are relegated to doing a per arch/per image type discovery >mechanism. If you have any suggestions that are cross arch/cross image type >that we could explore, we would be grateful and willing to investigate how to >adopt such a method. > >V/r, >Daniel
To be fair, the way things are going UEFI, i.e. PE/COFF, is becoming the new standard format. Yes, ELF would have been better, but...
