Re: [edk2] Corrupted EFI region

From: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
To: Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>
Cc: Matt Fleming <matt@console-pimps.org>,
	jerry.hoemann@hp.com, Andrew Fish <afish@apple.com>,
	edk2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, linux-efi@vger.kernel.org,
	Gleb Natapov <gleb@redhat.com>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>,
	Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>,
	Brian Richardson <brian.richardson@intel.com>,
	Colin Ian King <colin.king@canonical.com>,
	Randy Wright <rwright@hp.com>,
	Linn Crosetto <linn.crosetto@hp.com>,
	terry.lee@hp.com, samer.el-haj-mahmoud@hp.com,
	randy.pawell@hp.com, chrisp@hp.com, linda.knippers@hp.com,
	dong.wei@hp.com, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Chao Zhang <chao.b.zhang@intel.com>,
	Yao Jiewen <jiewen.yao@intel.com>
Subject: Re: [edk2] Corrupted EFI region
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 09:29:54 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130916162918.GA4555@leaf> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <523730F2.40408@redhat.com>

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 06:25:22PM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> On 09/16/13 17:57, Josh Triplett wrote:
> 
> >> The edk2 commit that flipped the memory type underneath the image data
> >> from EfiReservedMemoryType to EfiBootServicesData is:
> >>
> >>     https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/commit/4c58575e
> >>
> >> I think this commit is wrong. It's fine for OSPM to release the image
> >> data at some point, but not right after ExitBootServices(), because
> >> referencing pointers in ACPI tables survive strictly longer.
> >>
> >> ... Actually, the commit does follow the ACPI spec 5.0:
> >>
> >> 5.2.22.4 Image Address
> >>
> >>     The Image Address contains the location in memory where an
> >>     in-memory copy of the boot image can be found. The image should be
> >>     stored in EfiBootServicesData, allowing the system to reclaim
> >>     the memory when the image is no longer needed.
> >>
> >> The ACPI spec 5.0 should recommend EfiACPIReclaimMemory here IMO. (I
> >> take the current wording ("should be stored") as a recommendation only.)
> > 
> > I agree that UEFI *should* store the BGRT in EfiACPIReclaimMemory, but
> > in practice the UEFI firmware I've seen with a BGRT does follow that
> > recommendation and store it in EfiBootServicesData.  So, even if the
> > recommendation in the spec changed, the kernel would still have to
> > accomodate both possibilities.
> 
> Just for the theoretical debate:
> 
> The edk2 commit linked above is 5 days old. All UEFI firmware in the
> wild (on released hardware) should be using EfiReservedMemoryType (the
> pre-patch memory type), which is even stricter.
> 
> EfiReservedMemoryType can never be released & repurposed, so it should
> make no difference for crash kernel allocation, shouldn't it?
> 
> - call efi_free_boot_services() -- doesn't touch the image data (which
>   is in RAM of EfiReservedMemoryType),
> - reserve crash kernel,
> - access BGRT via ACPI.
> 
> BGRT had appeared in edk2 with
> 
>   https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/commit/0284e90c
> 
> and EfiReservedMemoryType used to be the allocation type until commit
> 4c58575e.
> 
> Or are you alluding to UEFI firmware that's not based on TianoCore?

I'm saying, in practice, that the systems I tested BGRT support on and
submitted patches for stored the BGRT's image in EfiBootServicesData.

- Josh Triplett