Guilherme G. Piccoli 36d5786a1c efi: pstore: Add module parameter for setting the record size
By default, the efi-pstore backend hardcode the UEFI variable size
as 1024 bytes. The historical reasons for that were discussed by
Ard in threads [0][1]:

"there is some cargo cult from prehistoric EFI times going
on here, it seems. Or maybe just misinterpretation of the maximum
size for the variable *name* vs the variable itself.".

"OVMF has
OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgX64.dsc:
gEfiMdeModulePkgTokenSpaceGuid.PcdMaxVariableSize|0x2000
OvmfPkg/OvmfPkgX64.dsc:
gEfiMdeModulePkgTokenSpaceGuid.PcdMaxVariableSize|0x8400

where the first one is without secure boot and the second with secure
boot. Interestingly, the default is

gEfiMdeModulePkgTokenSpaceGuid.PcdMaxVariableSize|0x400

so this is probably where this 1k number comes from."

With that, and since there is not such a limit in the UEFI spec, we
have the confidence to hereby add a module parameter to enable advanced
users to change the UEFI record size for efi-pstore data collection,
this way allowing a much easier reading of the collected log, which
wouldn't be scattered anymore among many small files.

Through empirical analysis we observed that extreme low values (like 8
bytes) could eventually cause writing issues, so given that and the OVMF
default discussed, we limited the minimum value to 1024 bytes, which also
is still the default.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAMj1kXF4UyRMh2Y_KakeNBHvkHhTtavASTAxXinDO1rhPe_wYg@mail.gmail.com/
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAMj1kXFy-2KddGu+dgebAdU9v2sindxVoiHLWuVhqYw+R=kqng@mail.gmail.com/

Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli <gpiccoli@igalia.com>
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
2022-11-18 09:14:09 +01:00
..
2022-10-06 11:04:57 -07:00
2022-05-25 16:55:16 -07:00