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Re: [Qemu-devel] Big real mode use in ipxe
From: |
Avi Kivity |
Subject: |
Re: [Qemu-devel] Big real mode use in ipxe |
Date: |
Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:52:43 +0300 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120717 Thunderbird/14.0 |
On 08/19/2012 06:44 PM, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 06:07:05PM +0300, Avi Kivity wrote:
>> ipxe contains the following snippet:
>>
>> /* Copy ROM to image source PMM block */
>> pushw %es
>> xorw %ax, %ax
>> movw %ax, %es
>> movl %esi, %edi
>> xorl %esi, %esi
>> movzbl romheader_size, %ecx
>> shll $9, %ecx
>> addr32 rep movsb /* PMM presence implies flat real mode */
>>
>> Which copies an image to %edi, with %edi >= 0x10000. This is in accordance
>> with the PMM spec:
> [...]
>> So far so good. But the Intel SDM says (20.1.1):
>>
>> "The IA-32 processors beginning with the Intel386 processor can generate
>> 32-bit offsets using an address override prefix; however, in real-address
>> mode, the value of
>> a 32-bit offset may not exceed FFFFH without causing an exception. For full
>> compatibility with Intel 286 real-address mode, pseudo-protection faults
>> (interrupt 12 or 13) occur if a 32-bit offset is generated outside the range
>> 0 through FFFFH."
>
> I interpretted the above to mean "however, in [normal real-mode where
> the segment registers are set to 0xffff] real-address mode, the value
> of a 32-bit offset may not exceed FFFFH without causing an exception"
I understood it the same way.
>
>> Which is exactly what happens here. My understanding of big real
>> mode is that to achieve a segment limit != 0xffff, you must go into
>> 32-bit protected mode, load a segment with a larger limit, and
>> return into real mode without touching the segment. The next load
>> of the segment will reset the limit to 0xffff.
>
> No, the segment limit is only changed when the protected mode bit is
> set and the segment register is loaded. When the protected mode bit
> is not set, only the segment offset changes.
That's what I missed. I always understood a segment reload in real mode
to reset the limit field, though I had no basis for it. I'll fix kvm
not to do this.
--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function