linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] iBFT features for v2.6.36

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Message-ID: <20100802195248.GB32503@andromeda.dapyr.net>
Date:	Mon, 2 Aug 2010 15:52:48 -0400
From:	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad@...nel.org>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Konrad Rzeszutek <konrad@...a.kernel.org>,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, James.Bottomley@...e.de,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, pjones@...hat.com, lenb@...nel.org,
	michaelc@...wisc.edu
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] iBFT features for v2.6.36

On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 11:22:21AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 08/02/2010 07:36 AM, Konrad Rzeszutek wrote:
> > What is iBFT?
> > The iBFT is an equivalent to the Boot Flag, except that its geared
> > towards iSCSI and hence requires much more information (such as
> > the IP of target, passwords, which device to login, etc). iBFT
> > is a data structure populated by the BIOS or the NIC to contain this
> > so that the OS can read it and login to the iSCSI and present
> > the boot device to the initrd for mounting / FS.
> 
> I really don't see iBFT as equivalent to the boot flag at all.  The boot

I think for somebody who might confuse iBFT with a bar of soap
the "equivalant" will put them in the right frame of mind. And yes
it is not equivalant at all, should have said something like 'remotely akin' :-)

> flag returns the status of the previous boot attempt; iBFT contains
> information about where to find the current root.
> 
> Unfortunately, we're increasingly seeing a proliferation of this kind of
> nonstandard ACPI tables, because it is difficult to add data to ACPI at

Keep in mind that iBFT is now a standard (woot!)

> runtime.  gPXE creates an aBFT table for AoE and sBFT for SRP, and
> memdisk uses mBFT for MEMDISK at the moment.

Oh man, didn't know those existed at all.
> 
> It would be good to have some kind of common structure framework for these.

I need to grok those tables some more to figure out what they all do.
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