hvmloader: flip "ACPI data" to "ACPI NVS" type for ACPI table region

ACPI specification contains statements describing memory marked with regular
"ACPI data" type as reclaimable by the guest. Although the guest shouldn't
really do it if it wants kexec or similar functionality to work, there
could still be ambiguities in treating these regions as potentially regular
RAM.

One such example is SeaBIOS which currently reports "ACPI data" regions as
RAM to the guest in its e801 call. Which it might have the right to do as any
user of this is expected to be ACPI unaware. But a QEMU bootloader later seems
to ignore that fact and is instead using e801 to find a place for initrd which
causes the tables to be erased. While arguably QEMU bootloader or SeaBIOS need
to be fixed / improved here, that is just one example of the potential problems
from using a reclaimable memory type.

Flip the type to "ACPI NVS" which doesn't have this ambiguity in it and is
described by the spec as non-reclaimable (so cannot ever be treated like RAM).

Signed-off-by: Igor Druzhinin <igor.druzhinin@citrix.com>
Acked-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>

diff --git a/tools/firmware/hvmloader/e820.c b/tools/firmware/hvmloader/e820.c
index 38bcf18b6371bc2e803896d5f5ff6490b37ed031..c490a0bc790c1e70912411f9b1cdf09e661dada2 100644 (file)
--- a/tools/firmware/hvmloader/e820.c
+++ b/tools/firmware/hvmloader/e820.c
@@ -202,16 +202,21 @@ int build_e820_table(struct e820entry *e820,
     nr++;
 
     /*
-     * Mark populated reserved memory that contains ACPI tables as ACPI data.
+     * Mark populated reserved memory that contains ACPI tables as ACPI NVS.
      * That should help the guest to treat it correctly later: e.g. pass to
-     * the next kernel on kexec or reclaim if necessary.
+     * the next kernel on kexec.
+     *
+     * Using NVS type instead of a regular one helps to prevent potential
+     * space reuse by an ACPI unaware / buggy bootloader, option ROM, etc.
+     * before an ACPI OS takes control. This is possible due to the fact that
+     * ACPI NVS memory is explicitly described as non-reclaimable in ACPI spec.
      */
 
     if ( acpi_enabled )
     {
         e820[nr].addr = RESERVED_MEMBASE;
         e820[nr].size = acpi_mem_end - RESERVED_MEMBASE;
-        e820[nr].type = E820_ACPI;
+        e820[nr].type = E820_NVS;
         nr++;
     }