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* [PATCH 0/2] UEFI panic notification mechanism
@ 2022-05-20 19:50 Guilherme G. Piccoli
  2022-05-20 19:50 ` [PATCH 1/2] efi: Add a generic helper to convert strings to unicode Guilherme G. Piccoli
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Guilherme G. Piccoli @ 2022-05-20 19:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: ardb, linux-efi
  Cc: linux-kernel, kernel-dev, kernel, anton, ccross, keescook, matt,
	matthew.garrett, tony.luck, Guilherme G. Piccoli

Hi folks, this patch set is about a mechanism to notify the UEFI
firmware about a panic event in the kernel, so the firmware is
enabled to take some action. The specific use case for us is to
show an alternative splash screen if a panic happened.
The base for the idea is to explore the panic notifiers mechanism,
that allows a callback to execute in the panic path.

Patch 1 is kind of a "clean-up" in a way; just taking a helper out
of efibc and adding it on generic efi.h header, so we have common
code used by 3 modules (efibc, efi-pstore and efi-panic).

Patch 2 is the efi-panic module itself; it is *strongly* based on
efibc, and for that I'd like to hereby thank to the authors.
The efibc code is very clear!


Some design decisions to be discussed:

(1) The variable name and value - I called it PanicWarn, and the
data it holds is just a byte, set by default to 0xFF (though users
can change that via module parameter). I have no attachment to
these, we can improve naming and the size of the data for example,
suggestions are appreciated!


(2) The 3 modules (efibc, efi-pstore and efi-panic) share a lot of
ideas or code; both efi-{pstore,panic} deal with panic events, and
both efi{bc,-panic} rely on notifiers and share code.
Should we unify some of them or anything like that? It seemed to me
the proper approach would be a simple and small standalone module,
but I'm open for suggestions.


(3) I've noticed a behavior that also happens in efi-pstore, I'm not
sure if that's something to care about. In the efi-panic module, after
a fresh boot, we check if PanicWarn is there an if so, we print a
message and _delete_ that variable from the NVRAM. But...the variable
is still present in sysfs, in the list created by efivars. Same happens
with efi-pstore, if we delete the dumps generated from /sys/fs/pstore.

In my case, I've used the __efivar_entry_delete() variant, so it doesn't
delete from any list, only from the firmware area. Should this be handled?
Or we just don't care with the empty variable reference in the sysfs tree?


I appreciate feedbacks and suggestions, thanks in advance for the attention!
Cheers,


Guilherme


Guilherme G. Piccoli (2):
  efi: Add a generic helper to convert strings to unicode
  efi-panic: Introduce the UEFI panic notification module

 drivers/firmware/efi/Kconfig      | 10 ++++
 drivers/firmware/efi/Makefile     |  1 +
 drivers/firmware/efi/efi-panic.c  | 97 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/firmware/efi/efi-pstore.c |  5 +-
 drivers/firmware/efi/efibc.c      | 16 ++---
 include/linux/efi.h               | 16 +++++
 6 files changed, 130 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 drivers/firmware/efi/efi-panic.c

-- 
2.36.0


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-06-28 18:10 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-05-20 19:50 [PATCH 0/2] UEFI panic notification mechanism Guilherme G. Piccoli
2022-05-20 19:50 ` [PATCH 1/2] efi: Add a generic helper to convert strings to unicode Guilherme G. Piccoli
2022-05-20 19:50 ` [PATCH 2/2] efi-panic: Introduce the UEFI panic notification module Guilherme G. Piccoli
2022-06-02 17:39 ` [PATCH 0/2] UEFI panic notification mechanism Guilherme G. Piccoli
2022-06-28  7:49   ` Ard Biesheuvel
2022-06-28 18:10     ` Guilherme G. Piccoli

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