Use of a flash memory device for the BIOS was added in series "[PATCH
v10 0/8] PC system flash support", commit 4732dca..1b89faf, v1.1.
Flash vs. ROM is a guest-visible difference. Thus, flash use had to
be suppressed for machine types pc-1.0 and older. This was
accomplished by adding a dummy device "pc-sysfw" with property
"rom_only":
* Non-zero rom_only means "use ROM". Default for pc-1.0 and older.
* Zero rom_only means "maybe use flash". Default for newer machines.
Not only is the dummy device ugly, it was also retroactively added to
the older machine types! Fortunately, it's not guest-visible (thus no
immediate guest ABI breakage), and has no vmstate (thus no immediate
migration breakage). Breakage occurs only if the user unwisely
enables flash by setting rom_only to zero. Patch review FAIL #1.
Why "maybe use flash"? Flash didn't (and still doesn't) work with
KVM. Therefore, rom_only=0 really means "use flash, except when KVM
is enabled, use ROM". This is a Bad Idea, because it makes enabling/
disabling KVM guest-visible. Patch review FAIL #2.
Aside: it also precludes migrating between KVM on and off, but that's
not possible for other reasons anyway.
Fix as follows:
1. Change the meaning of rom_only=0 to mean "use flash, no ifs, buts,
or maybes" for pc-i440fx-1.5 and pc-q35-1.5. Don't change anything
for older machines (to remain bug-compatible).
2. Change the default value from 0 to 1 for these machines.
Necessary, because 0 doesn't work with KVM. Once it does, we can flip
the default back to 0.
3. Don't revert the retroactive addition of device "pc-sysfw" to older
machine types. Seems not worth the trouble.
4. Add a TODO comment asking for device "pc-sysfw" to be dropped once
flash works with KVM.
Net effect is that you get a BIOS ROM again even when KVM is disabled,
just like for machines predating the introduction of flash.
To get flash instead, use "--global pc-sysfw.rom_only=0".
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Message-id: 1365780303-26398-4-git-send-email-armbru@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>
Markus Armbruster