Re: [PATCH 1/3] acpi/processor: fix evaluating _PDC method when running as Xen dom0

From: Rafael J. Wysocki
Date: Fri Dec 02 2022 - 12:06:54 EST


On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 5:37 PM Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 08:17:56AM -0800, Dave Hansen wrote:
> > On 12/2/22 04:24, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> > > On the implementation side, is the proposed approach acceptable?
> > > Mostly asking because it adds Xen conditionals to otherwise generic
> > > ACPI code.
> >
> > That's a good Rafael question.

Sorry for joining late, but first off _PDC has been deprecated since
ACPI 3.0 (2004) and it is not even present in ACPI 6.5 any more.

It follows from your description that _PDC is still used in the field,
though, after 18 years of deprecation. Who uses it, if I may know?

> > But, how do other places in the ACPI code handle things like this?
>
> Hm, I don't know of other places in the Xen case, the only resource
> in ACPI AML tables managed by Xen are Processor objects/devices AFAIK.
> The rest of devices are fully managed by the dom0 guest.
>
> I think such special handling is very specific to Xen, but maybe I'm
> wrong and there are similar existing cases in ACPI code already.
>
> We could add some kind of hook (iow: a function pointer in some struct
> that could be filled on a implementation basis?) but I didn't want
> overengineering this if adding a conditional was deemed OK.

What _PDC capabilities specifically do you need to pass to the
firmware for things to work correctly?

What platforms are affected?