From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from firstgate.proxmox.com (firstgate.proxmox.com [212.224.123.68]) by lore.proxmox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 682031FF13F for ; Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:25:02 +0200 (CEST) Received: from firstgate.proxmox.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by firstgate.proxmox.com (Proxmox) with ESMTP id 0C3C31F52D; Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:25:02 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:24:27 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Subject: Re: Design for custom UEFI firmware in PVE To: Christian Ludwig , "pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com" References: <10513e3f2c0d94bc938a540b4a0a18749eb5ed96.camel@genua.de> Content-Language: en-US From: Fiona Ebner In-Reply-To: <10513e3f2c0d94bc938a540b4a0a18749eb5ed96.camel@genua.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Bm-Milter-Handled: 55990f41-d878-4baa-be0a-ee34c49e34d2 X-Bm-Transport-Timestamp: 1776961378090 X-SPAM-LEVEL: Spam detection results: 0 AWL 0.008 Adjusted score from AWL reputation of From: address BAYES_00 -1.9 Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% DMARC_MISSING 0.1 Missing DMARC policy KAM_DMARC_STATUS 0.01 Test Rule for DKIM or SPF Failure with Strict Alignment SPF_HELO_NONE 0.001 SPF: HELO does not publish an SPF Record SPF_PASS -0.001 SPF: sender matches SPF record URIBL_BLOCKED 0.001 ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to URIBL was blocked. See http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/DnsBlocklists#dnsbl-block for more information. [proxmox.com] Message-ID-Hash: ODS74TUWD6P7G4JIWJ7NG57IMPUUK6W2 X-Message-ID-Hash: ODS74TUWD6P7G4JIWJ7NG57IMPUUK6W2 X-MailFrom: f.ebner@proxmox.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; loop; banned-address; emergency; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.10 Precedence: list List-Id: Proxmox VE development discussion List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: Hi Christian, Am 17.04.26 um 6:38 PM schrieb Christian Ludwig: > there are certain situations when a VM template might bundle its own > UEFI firmware [1], [2]. TL;DR: Some virtual security appliances like > SonicWall or Genuscreen, bring their own OVMF implementation. > Especially in a confidential computing environment, the goal is to not > trust the hypervisor. It makes perfect sense to not use the firmware > shipped with Proxmox in that scenario. > > At Genua we plan to bring support for custom UEFI firmware to Proxmox. > We are new to Proxmox VE development, so bear with us. I want to share > our design, before we start the effort to implement it. Thank you for working on this! > The current UEFI firmware implementation in PVE has two firmware files. > A host provided code image that ships with each Proxmox release and is > the same for every VM. And a per-VM writable data store. We plan to > implement a way to upload and use a custom code image per VM. > > Our design introduces a new 'firmware' content type for directory-based > storage volumes. The admin can then upload UEFI firmware files there. > This might even be useful for other types of firmware in the future. > The firmware file can then be connected to a VM using the VM's QEMU > config setting, but only if the VM was configured to boot in UEFI mode > before. If set, the image overrides the -bios QEMU command line option > for confidential VMs. These do not have a UEFI data store. For > conventional VMs the option overrides the -pflash0 command line option. I think the new 'firmware' content type can be fine, but maybe it should even be 'efi-firmware'. In particular, with the 'images' content type, we regret overloading it (for VMs and CTs) and there is an unapplied series [0] that would make the content type <-> volume type mapping 1:1. Let's clarify the exact usage/workflow of the firmware images: 1. Is it upload and assign the firmware image only to a single VM (read-write or read-only) and remove it when the VM is gone? So a strict 1:1 mapping, each firmware image ever belongs to a single VM. 2. Is it upload and copy the firmware image for each VM before first use (read-write or read-only)? So a loose 1:1 mapping. While the original firmware image is 1:n, its copies are strictly 1:1. 3. Is it upload and use by multiple VMs (I assume read-only, since read-write is probably too outlandish here)? So a proper 1:n mapping between firmware image and VMs. Case 1 would behave similar to 'images', but with upload support. Case 2 would behave similar to 'import'+'images'. Case 3 would behave similar to 'iso'. To be clear, this is not a suggestion to use those content types, just to give some orientation with what we already have. I think in all three cases we can have 'efi-firmware' as a new content type. > This does not change anything for efidisk0. What exactly do you mean here? That the schema/behavior for efidisk0 still is the same? I suppose you'll also warn if an EFI disk is attached to a confidential VM like currently happens? > Storage handling for firmware files and VM configuration shall be > accessible from the API as a first step. We are not very concerned > about the web interface. Does that approach make sense to you? Is it ok > to go with a new content type or are there better alternatives? > > > - Christian > > [1] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5898 > [2] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7258 [0]: https://lore.proxmox.com/pve-devel/20250729111557.136012-1-w.bumiller@proxmox.com/ Best Regards, Fiona