Re: [Xen-devel] UEFI support on Dell boxes

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 26.11.2019 21:18, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 26/11/2019 20:12, Roman Shaposhnik wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
>>> So, to improve Xen's hardware/firmware compatibility, I have two ideas:
>>>
>>> 1. Make efi=attr=uc the default (it's still possible to disable it with
>>> efi=attr=no).
>> I'd be very much in favor of that too (especially since it seems to match
>> Linux behaviour) What do others think?
> 
> Its more than just this.  Linux also doesn't use EFI reboot because it
> is broken almost everywhere (because Windows doesn't use it because its
> broken almost everywhere, so it never gets fixed).
> 
> Xen should be following Linux, but I'm exhausted arguing this point.

Where it makes sense, yes. But there are cases where it doesn't (we
don't, for example, want to blindly inherit bugs). Nor do I see why
Linux should be the only possible reference. If other OSes work
around issues in a better way than Linux does, why should we follow
Linux rather than such alternative implementation?

> A consequence is that downstream tend to share a pile of "unbreak Xen on
> UEFI" patches which have been rejected upstream on philosophical rather
> than technical grounds, despite this being a toxic environment to work in.

We'll get out of this recurring debate only if you or anyone else
propose to have someone other than me be the UEFI code maintainer.
No matter that you call them philosophical rather than technical
arguments, I continue to be of the firm opinion that workarounds
for all sorts of things are acceptable, but shouldn't impact in
any way systems adhering to standards. (It is probably [bad] luck
that I've not myself been severely impacted by UEFI implementation
issues with any of the boxes I routinely test on.)

Jan

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