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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 00/17 v5] SBSA UART emulation support in Xen



On 07/04/2017 08:31 AM, Bhupinder Thakur wrote:
Hi Julien,

Hi Bhupinder,

Thank you for the summary!

[...]

Currently, UEFI firmware uses hvc as the console for input/output. Now
with the support
of SBSA UART in Xen, it is preferrable that UEFI firmware should be
able to the uart
as well.

One option which was discussed was to use pl011 purely as a debug
port. Currently the debug
prints are intermixed with the normal console output. Now with uart
port becoming available
the debug prints can be redirected to pl011 thus cleaning up the console output.

Other option is to output everything on both HVC and pl011 both but it
takes away the advantage
of separating out the debug and normal console prints. However, pl011
can be used as debug
port based on a compile time flag. If this compile-time is off, then
the output can be sent to both
HVC and pl011.

Based on this discussion I feel that:
- the default behaviour should be writing the output to both HVC and pl011.

Hmmm. If I remember correctly this was suggested but ruled out. It was considered that pl011 and PV console should not be treated equal. PL011 would be used for boot diagnostics (i.e imagine an Image with no Xen support).

So we would continue to use Xen PV console for UEFI console and let the choice for the debug at compile to be either on PL011 or PV console.

Stefano, any opinions?

- pl011 can be used as a pure debug port based on a compile-time flag.

Agree.



2. Linux seems to have hvc console as the default console i.e. if no
    console is specified then it uses hvc as the console. How can an
    option be provided in Linux to select either hvc or pl011 as the
    default console.


I am wondering what would happen if you use stdout-path in the device-tree.
Does it override the default console?

I tried adding a "chosen" node in the DT to select "sbsa-pl011" as the
stdout-path. I added the
  following code in make_chosen_node() function:

  fdt_property_string(fdt, "stdout-path", "sbsa-pl011");

However, I still see the initial console output going to hvc only.

What do you mean by inital console output? You mean the bootconsole?


IHMO, the best way to select the default console would be using either the
SPCR (for ACPI) or stdout-path (for DT). But the HVC console does not have
any description in the firmware. It might be worth considering adding
description.

The drawback is the user would always have to specify the console on the
command line. I think this is not too bad for a first approach.

Do we plan to address this requirement in the current patch series?

I am ok with this to be deferred. This is not highly critical. We should probably log it on xenproject.atlassian.net to avoid loosing the item.

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall

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