Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] qemu: use 'bochs' video type by default for UEFI domains
Hi,
Incidentally, and I haven't followed this closely so apologies if
I'm
asking a silly question, if the point of bochs-display is to have a
video device without legacy VGA emulation then why aren't we using
the existing virtio-gpu, which has been around a lot longer and has
better support throughout the stack, instead?
Well, virtio-gpu (on x86) actually is "-device virtio-vga". That comes
with legacy VGA emulation, for the boot display ...
For UEFI guests with virtio-gpu support it is possible to use "-display
virtio-gpu-pci" instead (simliar to arm). Only drawback is that you
can't have a EFI GOB with virtio-gpu-pci, so efifb doesn't work. Linux
kernel console shows up after the virtio-gpu driver loads, which is
rather late compared to efifb.
For UEFI guests without virtio-gpu support "-device virtio-gpu-pci" will
not work due to the lack of EFI GOB support. For these guests
"-display bochs-display" should preferred over "-device VGA", to get
rid
of the unused legacy VGA emulation (and thereby reduce the attack
surface).
Also note that bochs-display can be plugged into pcie slots (that is
true for virtio-gpu-pci too btw).
Not sure whenever implementing this works better in libvirt or
libosinfo.
cheers,
Gerd