[ipxe-devel] [iPXE] efi: provide possibility to disable cpu_nap

[Heinrich Schuchardt]

On 07/14/2017 11:03 AM, Michael Brown wrote:
> On 14/07/17 03:39, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:
>>> I assume that the equivalent is true on ARM, but you should check the
>>> documentation to be sure.
>>
>> And what do we do if some interrupts are implemented by a platform but
>> not the ones you are waiting for (console input and timer)?
> 
> We don't care about the console input interrupt, since console input is
> not latency sensitive.
> 
> We already start a 32Hz timer via CreateEvent() and SetTimer().  The
> timer interrupt must therefore be running, or the platform will not be
> able to trigger our timer event.  (In turn, this will prevent various
> timeout mechanisms from working, such as TCP retransmission.)
> 
>> According to
>>
>> http://dox.ipxe.org/tables_8h_source.html
>>
>> a solution matching your programming guidelines would be creating a
>> module for cpu_nap and deciding at link time if we want to use it.
> 
> You can already do that if you want.  In config/nap.h, use e.g.
> 
>  #undef NAP_EFIX86
>  #undef NAP_EFIARM
>  #define NAP_NULL
> 
> Needless to say, this is an incredibly ugly 'solution'.  Users are
> entitled to reasonably expect that they do not need to learn about this
> kind of hackery; an ARM64 iPXE UEFI binary should ideally Just Work if
> run on U-Boot without any compilation quirks.
> 
> U-Boot needs to provide a working timer via the SetTimer() API, since
> this is required in order for TCP and other retransmission mechanisms.
> This implies that U-Boot is already using a timer interrupt, in which
> case your entire point is moot.
> 
> If you somehow have SetTimer() working without being interrupt driven,
> then I am prepared to commit a patch to iPXE which avoids halting the
> CPU if interrupts are disabled (at the CPU level).  You then just need
> to ensure that U-Boot explicitly disables interrupts at the CPU level
> (rather than leaving them enabled but with no active interrupt sources).
> 
> Michael
> 

Hello Michael,

I guess the information concerning config/nap.h could be added to
http://ipxe.org/buildcfg/.

My understanding is that the local configuration should go into
src/config/local/*.h. You might want to mention this on the same page.

With the cpu_nap adjustment iPXE is now working fine for me when
starting from U-Boot. I have tested
* dhcp
* sanhook iSCSI-target
* chain http-target
* kernel http-target
* boot (after calling kernel)
* exit
* reboot

Thanks for the great work.

I used a lot of DEBUG options to analyze what was going wrong in
U-Boot's UEFI implementation. I could not find a documentation page on
this except for comments in the coding. Maybe you want to mention this
module wise log level control on the http://ipxe.org/buildcfg/log_level
page.

DEBUG='efi_acpi,' \
DEBUG+='efi_autoboot,' \
DEBUG+='efi_block,' \
DEBUG+='efi_bofm,' \
DEBUG+='efi_debug,' \
DEBUG+='efi_download,' \
DEBUG+='efi_driver,' \
DEBUG+='efi_entropy,' \
DEBUG+='efi_fbcon,' \
DEBUG+='efi_file,' \
DEBUG+='efi_guid,' \
DEBUG+='efi_image,' \
DEBUG+='efi_init,' \
DEBUG+='efi_local,' \
DEBUG+='efi_pci,' \
DEBUG+='efi_pxe,' \
DEBUG+='efi_reboot,' \
DEBUG+='efi_smbios,' \
DEBUG+='efi_snp_hii,' \
DEBUG+='efi_snp,' \
DEBUG+='efi_strings,' \
DEBUG+='efi_time,' \
DEBUG+='efi_timer,' \
DEBUG+='efi_uaccess,' \
DEBUG+='efi_umalloc,' \
DEBUG+='efi_usb,' \
DEBUG+='efi_utils,' \
DEBUG+='efi_watchdog,' \
DEBUG+='efidrvprefix,' \
DEBUG+='efiprefix,' \
DEBUG+='iscsi,' \
DEBUG+='nii,' \
DEBUG+='open,' \
DEBUG+='scsi,' \
DEBUG+='snp,' \
DEBUG+='snpnet' \
make bin-arm64-efi/snp.efi -j6 EMBED=myscript.ipxe

Best regards

Heinrich