Re: [Xen-devel] HVMLite / PVHv2 - using x86 EFI boot entry

From: Roger Pau Monné
Date: Wed Apr 13 2016 - 06:25:20 EST


On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 12:12:25AM +0200, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
[...]
> Also, x86 does have a history of short DT use. Just pointing that its there as
> an option as well. I'll Cc you on some thread about that.

I don't see how this is relevant to the conversation that's going on:

How many x86 hardware provide DT? I bet this is 0%.

How many OSes can boot on x86 using DT? Linux maybe, certainly FreeBSD,
Windows or OpenBSD won't be able to boot at all when provided a DT on x86.

Is Xen going to craft a DT for x86 based on ACPI? No, because it can't parse
the DSDT or other dynamic tables that contain the information about
the devices in the system.

I would also like to point out that DT or not DT is not really the problem
here, the issue that George was trying to point out is that on x86 there's
some legacy hardware that's considered to be always there, so it's presence
is not signaled by ACPI, and HVMlite is _not_ emulating this hardware. It
doesn't matter if the hardware description comes from ACPI or DT, this
hardware is considered to be always present on PC compatible hardware.

Roger.