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    SubjectRe: [PATCH] x86: alternative identifier for Phoenix BIOS

    * Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

    > On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:55:20 -0800
    > "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
    >
    > > Philipp Kohlbecher wrote:
    > > > My laptop (a Samsung X20) contains a Phoenix BIOS and would benefit from
    > > > patch 1e22436eba84edfec9c25e5a25d09062c4f91ca9 (x86: reserve low 64K on
    > > > AMI and Phoenix BIOS boxen).
    > > >
    > > > However, according to /sys/class/dmi/id/bios_vendor, the BIOS identifies
    > > > its vendor as "Phoenix Technologies LTD" (sans the comma).
    > >
    > > Given that AMI and Phoenix combined is something like 80% of the BIOS
    > > market, if not more, it might simply be easier to make it unconditional,
    > > or make it a whitelist instead.
    >
    > Far more useful would be to make people aware of the problem. If the
    > BIOS is scribbling in the low 64K of RAM not just BIOS areas, and
    > doing so outside of ACPI marked areas they need to fix the BIOS
    > ASAP. If they leave their BIOSes randomly scribbling in operating
    > system memory areas then as with previous (hardware related) cases
    > of vendors knowingly shipping corrupting equipment they'll be
    > building up a huge class action legal liability.
    >
    > As such making sure the vendor knows in a way they cannot deny is a
    > very useful activity.

    CONFIG_X86_CHECK_BIOS_CORRUPTION=y will do that, it prints:

    Corrupted low memory at 0x1000 (4096 phys) = 0x1234
    Memory corruption detected in low memory
    < stack trace >

    if enough distros turn it on (at least in their debug kernels) it
    creates the right kind of user pressure.

    This debug feature to catch BIOS-generated low-memory corruption is
    already upstream.

    Ingo


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