svn commit: r307326 - head/sys/boot/efi/loader

[Bruce Simpson]

On 17/10/16 18:40, John Baldwin wrote:
> I'm a bit hesitant to do all the type parsing in the kernel vs userland.
> However, I think having smbios(4) export a /dev/smbios that you can either
> read() or mmap() to access the table would be very convenient and let you
> keep the bits to parse the table in userland (and not require root if we
> allow read-only access to mortals on /dev/foo).

This is probably a bit left-field, but I'm wondering if both methods 
(expose-to-loader-kenv and user-space-accessible devfs node) can be 
re-used for things like the Linux-oriented kernel environment page 
exported by SYSLINUX/PXELINUX memdisk, which I've used with some success 
to boot FreeBSD installers in heterogeneous private cloud/lab setups.

It exports this information using an ACPI-like table in that BIOS HBA 
type area in x86 address space, but the table is not DSDT linked (it's 
not produced by the BIOS).

Having a coherent means of dealing with it would be very useful, as such 
FreeBSD installers (which I've deployed as mfsBSD images) can then 
basically re-use what's been done for EFI variables for those legacy 
systems which don't support/can't use EFI network boot. As yet, I've not 
tried this with 64-bit EFI systems.