• Matt Domsch's avatar
    EDD: x86 BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive support · 7df2bda6
    Matt Domsch authored
    The major changes implemented in this patch:
    arch/i386/boot/setup.S - int13 real mode calls store results in empty_zero_page
    arch/i386/kernel/setup.c - copy results from empty_zero_page to local storage
    arch/i386/kernel/edd.c - module exports results via driverfs
    
    x86 systems suffer from a disconnect between what BIOS believes is the
    boot disk, and what Linux thinks BIOS thinks is the boot disk.  This
    manifests itself in multi-disk systems - it's quite possible to
    install a distribution, only to fail on reboot - the disk installed to
    is not the disk BIOS is booting from.  Dell restricts our possible
    standard factory installed Linux offerings to "disks on no more than
    one controller" to avoid this problem, but mechanisms now exist to
    solve it and allow such configurations.
    
    BIOS Enhanced Disk Device Services (EDD) 3.0 provides the ability for
    disk adapter BIOSs to tell the OS what it believes is the boot disk.
    While this isn't widely implemented in BIOSs yet, it's time that Linux
    received support to be ready as BIOSs with this feature do become
    available.  At a minimum, LSI MegaRAID cards support this today.
    
    EDD works by providing the bus (PCI, PCI-X, ISA, InfiniBand, PCI
    Express, or HyperTransport) location (e.g. PCI 02:01.0) and interface
    (ATAPI, ATA, SCSI, USB, 1394, FibreChannel, I2O, RAID, SATA) location
    (e.g. SCSI ID 5 LUN 0) information for each BIOS int13 device.
    
    The patch below creates CONFIG_EDD, that when defined, makes the
    BIOS int13 calls to retrieve and store this information.  The data is
    copied to a safe place in setup.c, and exported via driverfs.
    
    Here's a sample driverfs tree with two BIOS int13 devices - dev 80 has
    incorrect PCI bus information, thus no symlinks are made, but as much
    info as possible is presented.  Dev 81 has correct PCI and SCSI
    information, thus symlinks are made to the actual disc device.
    
    /driverfs
    |-- bios
    |   |-- int13_dev80
    |   |   |-- extensions
    |   |   |-- host_bus
    |   |   |-- info_flags
    |   |   |-- interface
    |   |   |-- raw_data
    |   |   |-- sectors
    |   |   `-- version
    |   `-- int13_dev81
    |       |-- extensions
    |       |-- host_bus
    |       |-- info_flags
    |       |-- interface
    |       |-- pci_dev -> ../../root/pci2/02:0c.0/03:00.0/04:00.0
    |       |-- raw_data
    |       |-- disc -> ../../root/pci2/02:0c.0/03:00.0/04:00.0/scsi4/4:0:0:0
    |       |-- sectors
    |       `-- version
    |-- bus
    |   |-- scsi
    |   |   |-- devices
    |   |   |   |-- 4:0:0:0 -> ../../../root/pci2/02:0c.0/03:00.0/04:00.0/scsi4/4:0:0:0
    |   |   `-- drivers
    |   |       `-- sd
    `-- root
        |-- pci2
        |   |-- 02:0c.0
        |   |   |-- 03:00.0
        |   |   |   |-- 04:00.0
        |   |   |   |   |-- irq
        |   |   |   |   |-- name
        |   |   |   |   |-- power
        |   |   |   |   |-- resource
        |   |   |   |   `-- scsi4
        |   |   |   |       |-- 4:0:0:0
        |   |   |   |       |   |-- 4:0:0:0::p1
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- kdev
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- name
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- power
        |   |   |   |       |   |   `-- type
        |   |   |   |       |   |-- 4:0:0:0:disc
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- kdev
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- name
        |   |   |   |       |   |   |-- power
        |   |   |   |       |   |   `-- type
        |   |   |   |       |   |-- name
        |   |   |   |       |   |-- power
        |   |   |   |       |   `-- type
    
    
    (Yes, the 'bios' top-level directory isn't the right place,
     and Patrick has promised to make something there in the future,
     at which point this can be moved.)
    
    The 'raw_data' file contains the full set of information returned by BIOS
    with extra error reporting.  This exists for vendor BIOS debugging purposes.
    
    The 'host-bus' file contains the PCI (or ISA, HyperTransport, ...)
    identifying information, as BIOS knows it.
    
    The 'interface' file contains the SCSI (or IDE, USB, ...) identifying
    information, as BIOS knows it.
    
    The 'extensions' file lists the BIOS EDD extensions per spec.
    The 'info_flags' file lists the BIOS EDD device information flags per spec.
    The 'sectors' file reports the number of sectors BIOS believes this
    device has.
    The 'version' file lists the EDD version.  To have device path
    information, this must be 0x30 or above.  Earlier EDD versions exist
    without the device path - as much information as is available is presented.
    
    At most 6 BIOS devices are reported, as that fills the space that's
    left in the empty_zero_page.  In general you only care about device
    80h, though for software RAID1 knowing what 81h is might be useful also.
    
    
    
    Known issues:
    - module unload leaves a directory around.  Seems related to
      creating symlinks in that directory.  Seen on kernel 2.5.41.
    - refcounting of struct device objects could be improved.
    
    TODO:
    - Add IDE and USB disk device support
    - when driverfs model of discs and partitions changes,
      update symlink accordingly.
    - Get symlink creator helper functions exported from
      drivers/base instead of duplicating them here.
    - move edd.[ch] to better locations if/when one is decided
    
    I'd also like to acknowledge the help and comments received from Greg
    KH and Patrick Mochel.  This isn't something driverfs was originally
    conceived to handle, their assistance has been invaluable.
    
    Please pull from:
    
    BK:
        http://mdomsch.bkbits.net/linux-2.5-edd-tolinus
    
    Patch (against 2.5.41+BK-current):
        http://domsch.com/linux/edd30/edd-driverfs-6.patch
        http://domsch.com/linux/edd30/edd-driverfs-6.patch.sign
    
    Thanks,
    Matt
    
    -- 
    Matt Domsch
    Sr. Software Engineer, Lead Engineer, Architect
    Dell Linux Solutions www.dell.com/linux
    Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com
    7df2bda6
zero-page.txt 2.87 KB