Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 5 Sep 2014 15:11:47 -0700 | Subject | Re: [PATCH] clocksource: arch_timer: Fix code to use physical timers when requested | From | Doug Anderson <> |
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Mark,
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:35 AM, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote: > Not if you boot Linux at hyp, as we've recommended for this precise > reason. That doesn't fix other things like CNTFRQ if the secure > initialisation doesn't poke that, however.
I'll freely admit that I'm out of my league and out of my comfort zone here, but...
In the theory that firmware ought to be as minimal as possible (because it's hard to update and hard to keep in sync with kernel versions), it seems like firmware ought to start the kernel out in as permissive mode as it's willing to provide, right?
If the kernel is started out as permissive as possible then it can do anything it needs to. Future versions of the kernel can be implemented to do any way-cool things that they want to do without an update to firmware, right? ...and current versions of the kernel can just shed permissions if they don't want them.
...so if I understand correctly, "Secure SVC" mode is more permissive than "Non Secure HYP" mode, right? It looks to me as if we currently start the kernel in "Secure SVC" mode. What do you think about the kernel detecting Secure SVC and then dropping down permission levels (to Non Secure HYP). Once it did this, it could update things like the virtual offset and then transition down further into non-secure SVC mode.
...or maybe this has been discussed millions of times already and I'm just clueless. ...or maybe this is just too hard for the kernel to do in a generic way?
-Doug
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