Re: [regression, bisected] x86: efi: Pass boot services variableinfo to runtime code

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Sat Jun 01 2013 - 07:02:43 EST




On Fri, 31 May 2013, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>
> I agree that a revert is probably the right thing to do here, but the
> original patch was there to permit a more accurate calculation of the
> amount of nvram in use, not to provide additional debug information.
> Reverting it is going to differently break a different set of systems

So "differently break" doesn't matter, if it's old breakage, and people
thus don't really expect it to work. We need to fix bugs without *new*
breakage, and quite frankly, I have been distressed by hearing the EFI
"specifications" mentioned so many times in this thread.

Firmware specs are pure and utter garbage. They are irrelevant. Firmware
is buggy, and will always be buggy. The "spec" doesn't matter. We should
use firmware for loading the kernel, and as little else as humanly
possible.

I'm very disappointed in how the EFI code doesn't seem to understand that.
There's tons of these stupid EFI variable crap that simply shouldn't
matter. Quite frankly, we'd be better off ignoring as much of it by
default as at all possible. Exactly because the more of an EFI interface
we have, the more we open us up to th einevitable firmware bugs.

Anyway, I'm traveling with absolutely horrendous internet access, so can
somebody please send a description of the revert with the relevant
information, because I literally have a hard time extracting it all from
this thread because my email access is so slow and flaky... Make it easy
for me to do the revert with a good explanation message, please,

Linus
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