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Re: [Xen-users] Is xen planning to support hvm guests booting under UEFI?



>From what I know the issue with OS X is not technical, it is simply that apple's EULA explicitly forbids their OS on non-apple hardware. I have seen a few vmware and virtual box os x images which seemed to work fairly ok, but no one is really working hard to make it work "well" because of the legal issues. I think that it will be a much bigger issue for windows though especially with windows 8 not too far away hopefully xen will be able to boot it :)

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:06 PM, jim burns <jim_burn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Pls cc: me as I am not subscribed.

>From http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/205255/windows-8-oem-specs-
may-block-linux-booting
:

Quote:

Red Hat's Matthew Garrett was one of the first to notice that according to the
new logo rules, all Windows 8 machines will need to be have the Unified
Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) instead of the venerable BIOS firmware
layer. BIOS has been pretty much the sole firmware interface for PCs for a
long time.

The EFI system has slowly been making headway in recent years, and right now
EFI firmware is compatible with Windows supporting the GUID Partition Table
(GPT), OS X/Intel, and Linux 2.6 and beyond machines. EFI is seen as a better
hardware/software interface than BIOS, since it is platform-agnostic, runs in
32- or 64-bit mode, and GPT machines can handle boot partitions of up to 9.4
zettabytes. (That's 9.5 billion terabytes to you and me.)

EFI, and the later UEFI specification, is not the problem for Linux. The
problem is Microsoft's other requirement for any Windows 8-certified client:
the system must support secure booting. This hardened boot means that "all
firmware and software in the boot process must be signed by a trusted
Certificate Authority (CA)," according to slides from a recent presentation on
the UEFI boot process made by Arie van der Hoeven, Microsoft Principal Lead
Program Manager.

:End Quote

Putting aside the signing problem for now, the immediate problem is qemu-dm as
the emulator for hvm guests, since it provides an emulated *bios*. I've always
been curious about this, as I've wanted to look forward to the day when I can
boot an Apple OS/X hvm guest.

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