Re: [PATCH v5 2/5] efi: Add embedded peripheral firmware support

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Hi,

On 05/08/2018 06:12 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
On Fri, May 04, 2018 at 07:54:28AM +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
On 4 May 2018 at 01:29, Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 29, 2018 at 11:35:55AM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
[...]
diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/request_firmware.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/request_firmware.rst
index c8bddbdcfd10..560dfed76e38 100644
--- a/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/request_firmware.rst
+++ b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/request_firmware.rst
@@ -73,3 +73,69 @@ If something went wrong firmware_request() returns non-zero and fw_entry
  is set to NULL. Once your driver is done with processing the firmware it
  can call call firmware_release(fw_entry) to release the firmware image
  and any related resource.
+
+EFI embedded firmware support
+=============================
This is a new fallback mechanism, please see:

Documentation/driver-api/firmware/fallback-mechanisms.rst

Refer to the section "Types of fallback mechanisms", augument the list there
and then move the section "Firmware sysfs loading facility" to a new file, and
then add a new file for your own.

+
+On some devices the system's EFI code / ROM may contain an embedded copy
+of firmware for some of the system's integrated peripheral devices and
+the peripheral's Linux device-driver needs to access this firmware.
You in no way indicate this is a just an invented scheme, a custom solution and
nothing standard.  I realize Ard criticized that the EFI Firmware Volume Protocol
is not part of the UEFI spec -- however it is a bit more widely used right?
Why can't Linux support it instead?

Most implementations of UEFI are based on PI,
That seems to be the UEFI Platform Initialization specification:

http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/PI_Spec_1_6.pdf

and so it is likely that
the protocols are available. However, the PI spec does not cover
firmware blobs,
Indeed, I cannot find anything about it on the PI Spec, but I *can* easily
find a few documents referring to the Firmware Volume Protocol:

http://wiki.phoenix.com/wiki/index.php/EFI_FIRMWARE_VOLUME_PROTOCOL

But this has no references at all...

I see stupid patents over some of this and authentication mechanisms for it:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170098084

and so it is undefined whether such blobs are self
contained (i.e., in separate files in the firmware volume), statically
linked into the driver or maybe even encrypted or otherwise
encapsulated, and the actual loadable image only lives in memory.
Got it, thanks this helps! There are two things then:

  1) The "EFI Firmware Volume Protocol" ("FV" for short in your descriptions
     below), and whether to support it or not in the future and recommend it
     for future use cases.

  b) Han's EFI scraper to help support 2 drivers, and whether or not to
     recommend it for future use cases.

Hans's case is the second one, i.e., the firmware is at an arbitrary
offset in the driver image. Using the FV protocol in this case would
result in a mix of both approaches: look up the driver file by GUID
[which could change btw between different versions of the system
firmware, although this is unlikely] and then still use the prefix/crc
based approach to sift through the image itself.
Got it. And to be clear its a reversed engineered solution to what
two vendors decided to do.

But my main objection is simply that from the UEFI forum point of
view, there is a clear distinction between the OS visible interfaces
in the UEFI spec and the internal interfaces in the PI spec (which for
instance are not subject to the same rules when it comes to backward
compatibility), and so I think we should not depend on PI at all.
Ah I see.

This
is all the more important considering that we are trying to encourage
the creation of other implementations of UEFI that are not based on PI
(e.g., uboot for arm64 implements the required UEFI interfaces for
booting the kernel via GRUB), and adding dependencies on PI protocols
makes that a moving target.
Got it!

So in my view, we either take a ad-hoc approach which works for the
few platforms we expect to support, in which case Hans's approach is
sufficient,
Modulo it needs some work for ARM as it only works for x86 right now ;)

or we architect it properly, in which case we shouldn't
depend on PI because it does not belong in a properly architected
OS<->firmware exchange.
OK, it sounds to me like we have room to then implement our own de-facto
standard for letting vendors stuff firmware into EFI as we in the Linux
community see fit.

We can start out by supporting existing drivers, but also consider customizing
this in the future for our own needs, so long as we document it and set
expectations well.

So we need to support what Hans is implementing for two reasons then:

a) The FV Protocol cannot be used to support the two drivers he's
    trying to provide support for -- I believe Hans tried and it didn't work,
    Hans, correct me if I'm wrong?

b) The FV Protocol relies on *internal* interfaces of PI spec, and since:
     1) The PI spec does not define firmware at all
     2) The internal interfaces of PI Spec does not guarantee any backward
        compatibility
    Any implementation details in FV may be subject to change, and may vary
    system to system. Supporting the FV Protocol would be difficult as it
    purposely ambiguous.

If accurate, Hans, can you capture this in your documentation somehow?
Yes I've added some extra doc to this extend for the next version of the
patchset.

Regards,

Hans

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