Re: [PATCH 0/5] ArmVirtPkg, OvmfPkg: improve firmware duration of direct kernel boot

["Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 08:02:53PM +0100, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> (Copying Rich, Xiang and Gabriel for testing requests below.)
> 
> Repo:   https://github.com/lersek/edk2.git
> Branch: kernel_before_bootdevs
> 
> After the recent series "OvmfPkg, ArmVirtQemu: leaner platform BDS
> policy for connecting devices", I'm picking up another earlier idea -- a
> direct kernel boot does not need devices such as disks and NICs to be
> bound by UEFI.
> 
> I tested this series extensively on QEMU, in OVMF (IA32X64) and
> ArmVirtQemu (AARCH64), both with and without direct kernel boot. I
> compared the logs in all sensible relations within a given architecture.
> 
> Rich, can you please test this on ARM64, with guestfish/libguestfs?
> Please attach a good number of disks at once on the command line, and
> compare the appliance's boot time between (e.g.) RHEL7's
> "/usr/share/AAVMF/AAVMF_CODE.fd" and the following binary (after
> decompression):
> 
>   https://people.redhat.com/lersek/kernel_before_bootdevs-991e2f2f-64cf-4566-b933-919928e2aa6b/QEMU_EFI.fd.padded.xz

I tested this on Fedora Rawhide (aarch64) with:

  kernel-core-4.16.0-0.rc5.git1.2.fc29.aarch64 (host & guest)
  qemu-2.11.0-5.fc29.aarch64
  edk2-aarch64-20171011git92d07e4-2.fc28.noarch
  libguestfs-1.39.1-1.fc29.aarch64

I used the /usr/bin/libguestfs-boot-benchmark tool from
libguestfs-benchmarking-1.39.1-1.fc29.aarch64

As a baseline, on my mid-range Intel i7 laptop (note that this number
is NOT comparable to the aarch64 numbers, it's just to give a flavour
of what is possible):

  Result: 1384.5ms ±9.2ms

On aarch64 using edk2-aarch64 from Fedora:

  Result: 8844.0ms ±30.7ms

On aarch64 using your supplied build of AAVMF:

  Result: 4156.6ms ±1.3ms

I also confirmed (using libguestfs-test-tool) that it was working and
using the right AAVMF_CODE.fd file.  Therefore:

  Tested-by: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/