gfx: a framebuffer at physical zero is not a framebuffer

Booting with a virtio-gpu as the *only* display reboot-looped. Not a hang, not
a panic: the firmware came back round to the boot menu, started the loader
again, and did it again, for ever, with nothing to say why.

virtio-gpu has no linear aperture, so OVMF's virtio GOP implements Blt and
nothing else. On a machine with one and nothing else, the firmware reports a
width and a height and a FrameBufferBase of **zero**:

    schos: framebuffer 0x0000000000000000 0x500x0x320

Two places took that at face value.

**kmain() tested `if (bi.ptr && ...)` with bi.ptr already run through P2V()**,
and P2V(0) is KERNBASE, which is not zero. So the guard could not fail -- and
its own comment, three lines above, said "drawing into address zero is a worse
failure than staying quiet". The intent was exactly right and the test could
never enforce it. It reads the physical value first now and tests that.

**vga_fb_init() attached the scanout regardless**, one layer down, so fixing
kmain alone just moved the same write.

Either one had gfx_clear() write four megabytes over physical 0: the real-mode
IVT, the BIOS data area, the AP trampoline at 0x7000, the early page tables.
Hence a reset with no output -- there was nothing left to run.

Both refuse now, and the refusal says what it is:

    vga: firmware reported a 1280x800 display with no framebuffer address;
         no graphical console

A machine with no usable linear framebuffer gets no graphical console. That is
the truth about it, and the serial line still has everything.

**It still does not reach a shell on such a machine**, and that is recorded
rather than implied: the console path assumes a framebuffer -- vt_init()
reports a terminal of `0 by 0` cells -- and that path has never been exercised.
What this fixes is a machine that destroyed low memory and reset; what it does
not do is make a headless boot work. Supported remains stdvga, with virtio-gpu
optional beside it, which is what docs/architecture/graphics.md already said.

Both supported configurations verified: stdvga alone and stdvga with
virtio-gpu, one boot each, no traps, socktest and memfdtest green.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Nexoniarz 2026-09-22 14:58:21 +02:00
commit ff0acfc913
3 changed files with 66 additions and 2 deletions

View file

@ -67,6 +67,37 @@ splash is drawn on — so `-vga std` must stay on the QEMU command line even whe
adding `-device virtio-gpu-pci`, because the loader's splash goes through VBE
and there is no virtio path that early.
### A framebuffer at physical zero is not a framebuffer
That last sentence used to be advice. It is now enforced, because ignoring it
did not produce a machine with no splash — it produced a **reboot loop**.
virtio-gpu has no linear aperture, so OVMF's virtio GOP implements `Blt` and
nothing else. On a machine whose only display is one, the firmware reports a
width and a height and a `FrameBufferBase` of **zero**. Two places took that at
face value:
- `kmain()` tested `if (bi.ptr && …)` — with `bi.ptr` already run through
`P2V()`, and `P2V(0)` is `KERNBASE`, which is not zero. The guard could not
fail, and its own comment said *"drawing into address zero is a worse failure
than staying quiet"*. It now tests the physical value before translating it.
- `vga_fb_init()` attached the scanout regardless, one layer down.
Either one wrote four megabytes over physical 0 — the real-mode IVT, the BIOS
data area, the AP trampoline at `0x7000`, the early page tables — and the
machine reset before it could print anything, came back to the firmware, and
did it again.
Both refuse now and say so. A machine with no usable linear framebuffer gets no
graphical console, which is the truth about it; the serial line still has
everything.
**A virtio-gpu-only machine still does not reach a shell.** It no longer
corrupts memory and it explains itself, but the console path assumes a
framebuffer — `vt_init()` reports a terminal of `0 by 0` cells — and that path
has never been exercised. Supported today is stdvga, with virtio-gpu optional
beside it.
`/dev/fb0` speaks the Linux fbdev interface: geometry through the fbdev ioctls,
and `mmap` of the real framebuffer at its real physical address.