Re: [PATCH v2 0/8] OvmfPkg: add the Variable PEIM, defragment the UEFI memmap

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 12/01/17 09:42, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On 30 November 2017 at 19:00, Jordan Justen <jordan.l.justen@intel.com> wrote:
>> As I recall, this enables a modest (non-essential) improvement in
>> fragmentation, at the cost of more ways to configure OVMF to hang
>> during boot. (With info available via debugcon.)
>>
>> I would prefer if were able to always fallback and continue boot.
>> Later, after GOP has started we could visibly warn the user that they
>> haven't properly enabled SMM and/or flash.
>>
>> If we had a way to do this, I would be in favor of displaying an error
>> message and delaying for 30 seconds before booting if flash has not
>> been enabled. (Or, if SMM was enabled in the build, but not set on the
>> command line.)
>>
>> At that point, I think we could start to transition to making flash an
>> boot requirement for OVMF. But first we need to be able to visibly
>> warn the user why they are not able to boot.
>>
> 
> That doesn't argue against this series, does it? AFAICT it only argues
> against building OVMF with a non-default value for
> MEM_VARSTORE_EMU_ENABLE

... which is explicitly documented in patch 8.