[PATCH v2 00/19] efi/x86: Avoid the need to mangle the EFI memory map
From: Ard Biesheuvel
Date: Thu Mar 19 2026 - 05:16:24 EST
From: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@xxxxxxxxxx>
At boot, x86 uses E820 tables, memblock tables and the EFI memory map to
reason about which parts of system RAM are available to the OS, and
which are reserved.
While other EFI architectures treat the EFI memory map as immutable, the
x86 boot code modifies it to keep track of memory reservations of boot
services data regions, in order to distinguish which parts have been
memblock_reserve()'d permanently, and which ones have been reserved only
temporarily to work around buggy implementations of the EFI runtime
service [SetVirtualAddressMap()] that reconfigures the VA space of the
runtime services themselves.
This method is mostly fine for marking entire regions as reserved, but
it gets complicated when the code decides to split EFI memory map
entries in order to mark some of it permanently reserved, and the rest
of it temporarily reserved.
Let's clean this up, by
- marking permanent reservations of EFI boot services data memory as
MEMBLOCK_RSRV_KERN
- taking this marking into account when deciding whether or not a EFI
boot services data region can be freed
- dropping all of the EFI memory map insertion/splitting logic and the
allocation/freeing logic, all of which have become redundant.
Changes since v1:
- Also get rid of all reallocation logic, and just reuse the initial
allocation throughout, and keep track of the number of valid entries
- Drop abuse of the EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME flag
- Add acks from Mike to #1-#2
This v2 now gets rid of all manipulations of the EFI memory map except
for setting the virtual address field and suppressing unwanted entries.
Cc: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Ard Biesheuvel (19):
memblock: Permit existing reserved regions to be marked RSRV_KERN
efi: Tag memblock reservations of boot services regions as RSRV_KERN
x86/efi: Unmap kernel-reserved boot regions from EFI page tables
x86/efi: Drop EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME check from __ioremap_check_other()
x86/efi: Omit RSRV_KERN memblock reservations when freeing boot
regions
x86/efi: Defer sub-1M check from unmap to free stage
x86/efi: Simplify real mode trampoline allocation quirk
x86/efi: Omit redundant kernel image overlap check
x86/efi: Drop redundant EFI_PARAVIRT check
x86/efi: Do not rely on EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME bit and avoid entry
splitting
efi: Use nr_map not map_end to find the last valid memory map entry
x86/efi: Only merge EFI memory map entries on 32-bit systems
x86/efi: Clean the memory map using iterator and filter API
x86/efi: Update the runtime map in place
x86/efi: Use iterator API when mapping EFI regions for runtime
x86/efi: Reuse memory map instead of reallocating it
x86/efi: Defer compaction of the EFI memory map
x86/efi: Do not abuse RUNTIME bit to mark boot regions as reserved
x86/efi: Free unused tail of the EFI memory map
arch/x86/include/asm/efi.h | 15 +-
arch/x86/mm/ioremap.c | 6 +-
arch/x86/platform/efi/Makefile | 2 +-
arch/x86/platform/efi/efi.c | 247 ++++-------------
arch/x86/platform/efi/efi_32.c | 31 +++
arch/x86/platform/efi/memmap.c | 250 -----------------
arch/x86/platform/efi/quirks.c | 287 ++++++--------------
arch/x86/platform/efi/runtime-map.c | 4 +-
drivers/firmware/efi/arm-runtime.c | 2 +-
drivers/firmware/efi/efi.c | 4 +-
drivers/firmware/efi/memattr.c | 2 +-
drivers/firmware/efi/memmap.c | 8 +-
drivers/firmware/efi/riscv-runtime.c | 2 +-
include/linux/efi.h | 29 +-
include/linux/memblock.h | 1 +
mm/memblock.c | 15 +
16 files changed, 236 insertions(+), 669 deletions(-)
delete mode 100644 arch/x86/platform/efi/memmap.c
base-commit: 1f318b96cc84d7c2ab792fcc0bfd42a7ca890681
--
2.53.0.851.ga537e3e6e9-goog