2014-11-25 17:39:30

by Matt Fleming

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 03/13] arm64: improve CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM handling

On Tue, 18 Nov, at 01:57:02PM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> Improve the handling of /dev/mem mappings under CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM by:
> - allowing read-only access to parts of System RAM that are not
> considered memory by the kernel, this is mainly intended for exposing
> UEFI Configuration tables to userland;
> - avoid using non-cached mappings for those parts of System RAM, as it
> may result in mismatched attributes.

Is this really the best way to expose EFI config tables?

We already have parts in /sys/firmware/efi/ and in particular we expose
the runtime mappings there for kexec on x86.

Hooking this into the /dev/mem infrastructure just seems wrong to me.

--
Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center


2014-11-25 17:48:08

by Borislav Petkov

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 03/13] arm64: improve CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM handling

On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 05:39:25PM +0000, Matt Fleming wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Nov, at 01:57:02PM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > Improve the handling of /dev/mem mappings under CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM by:
> > - allowing read-only access to parts of System RAM that are not
> > considered memory by the kernel, this is mainly intended for exposing
> > UEFI Configuration tables to userland;
> > - avoid using non-cached mappings for those parts of System RAM, as it
> > may result in mismatched attributes.
>
> Is this really the best way to expose EFI config tables?
>
> We already have parts in /sys/firmware/efi/ and in particular we expose
> the runtime mappings there for kexec on x86.

Yeah!

> Hooking this into the /dev/mem infrastructure just seems wrong to me.

And this virtmap.c thing is arm-only, AFAICT, but it looks like generic
code and like a wholly new way of doing the efi page table.

This thing needs to be properly split into generic pieces which go into
drivers/firmware/efi/ and arm-specific which would make that EFI_VIRTMAP
into an arch bit.

And so on and so on...

--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.

Sent from a fat crate under my desk. Formatting is fine.
--