[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#858962: Bug#858962: Request: enable OVMF at build time in 4.8 as it does not require non-free anymore

[John Keates]

>> I'm not sure how to create a .patch file for this, but since it's one line with very clear results, I hope it's sufficient.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> However: I do not intend to make this change at this stage of the
> stretch release freeze.

I suppose that makes sense since in a freeze you wouldn’t want ‘new’ features added.

> If you (or someone else) gets preapproval from the release team, then
> I would be prepared to do.  But I think such approval would probably
> be refused for good reasons.  If someone wants to make such an
> approval request, please let me know and I may be able to help
> pre-review it etc. - on the condition that this isn't taken as
> endorsement :-).
> 
> Thanks,
> Ian.

I really think this should be enabled, it’s side-effects are nil by default as far as I know, and it’s been in there for a long time, but simply not enabled.
Enabling this will allow virtualisation of operating systems that don’t support BIOS-style machine firmware in HVM mode. On top of that, it allows
virtualising Apple’s macOS since that requires EFI. Legally, that requires Debian to be installed in Apple hardware, which happens to be what I’m doing, so that’s fine too.

Some Windows variants will only boot on EFI enabled machines too, so there is a need for OVMF there as well. Currently, some people resort to using KVM since it works there,
but I’d rather see it working with Xen. Same goes for some ARM setups where you can’t boot HVM machines without EFI.

Where would I go to make a request for approval from the release team?

Thanks,
John


> On 29 Mar 2017, at 12:51, Ian Jackson <ian.jackson at eu.citrix.com> wrote:
> 
> Control: tags -1 patch
> 
> John Keates writes ("Bug#858962: Request: enable OVMF at build time in 4.8 as it does not require non-free anymore"):
>> Package: src:xen
>> Version: 4.8.1~pre.2017.01.23-1
>> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Hi.  Thanks for the report.
> 
>> Currently, OVMF is not enabled, probably because it used to require
>> OVMF at compile time which would make for a hard dependency on
>> non-free code. Since this is no longer the case, you could make it a
>> run-time option by enabling OVMF for this package, and when a user
>> would want to actually use it, they would only need to add a OVMF
>> binary to a preset path themselves (i.e. by installing the non-free
>> ovmf package).
> 
> I looked into this OVMF nonfreeness and it seems to be fixed:
>  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=815618
> 
>> Around line 74 the compile-time options for Xen are listed, and enabling OVMF is as simple as adding one line:
>> 
>>               --enable-ovmf --with-system-ovmf=/usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd
>> 
>> The path specified does not need to exist at compile time. In this
>> case I chose to use the path where the OVMF package installs the
>> binary firmware file so it can be automatically used.
> 
> Thanks for this testing.
> 
> I think that, given that UEFI is becoming quite common, it might be
> worth adding a dependency of some kind to the Debian Xen packages, as
> well as simply enabling ovmf support.  But that's probably not a
> blocker for fixing this.
> 
>> I'm not sure how to create a .patch file for this, but since it's one line with very clear results, I hope it's sufficient.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> However: I do not intend to make this change at this stage of the
> stretch release freeze.
> 
> If you (or someone else) gets preapproval from the release team, then
> I would be prepared to do.  But I think such approval would probably
> be refused for good reasons.  If someone wants to make such an
> approval request, please let me know and I may be able to help
> pre-review it etc. - on the condition that this isn't taken as
> endorsement :-).
> 
> Thanks,
> Ian.
> 
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