[Qemu-devel] Re: [SeaBIOS] [PATCH 0/8] option rom loadingoverhaul.

[Anthony Liguori]

On 12/22/2009 01:58 AM, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> > Your cable TV provider does likely also control what beside the FW (if anything)
> > runs on your set-top-box. So he can verify the FW upgrade doesn't break anything
> > in the field. That pre-deployment verification is not possible in non closed
> > environments.
> >
> >      
> Yet it doesn't stop HW manufacturers to require FW update as the first
> step of their support procedure. They don't do it automatically only
> because they can't.
>    

Let's put correctness aside for a moment.

Right now, if you replace the contents of pc-bios while you have a guest 
running, heck, even if you rm -rf, the guest will continue functioning 
until you do a hard power off.

Changing this behavior feels like a regression to me.  It really seems 
to me like it makes things a lot more brittle.

The only benefit I can see is that you'll use a new rom after migration 
after the first reset.  Maybe that's desirable behavior although I'm not 
sure.

I'd feel a lot better about something that read the real rom contents at 
start-up, and then replaced migrated roms after reset or something like 
that.  That gives us the use-case without making qemu depend on 
rereading things while it's running.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori