METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR RECOVERY FROM AN ERROR IN A COMPUTING DEVICE

• US 20090172471A1
• Filed: 12/28/2007
• Published: 07/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Zimmer, Vincent J., Rothman, Michael A., Dorwin, David
• Granted Patent: US 7,779,305 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/17
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1417 Boot up procedures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1441 Resetting or repowering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45541 Bare-metal, i.e. hypervisor runs directly on hardware

Abstract

A method and system for supporting recovery of a computing device includes determining and storing a sub-set of firmware instructions used to establish a pre-boot environment and executing the sub-set of firmware instructions in response to an error.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

executing firmware instructions to establish a pre-boot environment on a computing device;

determining a sub-set of the firmware instructions that provide pre-boot environment services;

storing the sub-set of the firmware instructions in a reserved memory location;

executing a virtual machine monitor; and

transferring control from the virtual machine monitor to the sub-set of firmware instructions in response to an error.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual machine monitor is a hypervisor.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the error comprises at least one of a system management interrupt and a platform management interrupt.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the sub-set of firmware instructions comprise extensible firmware interface instructions.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the sub-set of firmware instructions includes at least one driver execution environment (DXE) driver.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a guest instances, wherein transferring control from the virtual machine monitor to the sub-set of firmware instruction comprises invoking the sub-set of firmware instructions in the guest instance in response to the error.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating a virtual machine; and

executing an operating system in the virtual machine, wherein the error comprises an error of the operating system.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

storing a state of the operating system in response to the error, and

restoring the state of the operating system subsequent to execution of the sub-set of firmware instructions.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing a state of the virtual machine monitor in response to the error, and

restoring the state of the virtual machine monitor subsequent to execution of the sub-set of firmware instructions.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein executing a virtual machine monitor comprises executing a virtual machine monitor having an error handler configured to execute the sub-set of firmware instructions in response to the error.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the error comprises at least one of a system management interrupt and a platform management interrupt.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the sub-set of firmware instructions comprise extensible firmware interface instructions.

11. A machine readable medium comprising a plurality of instructions, that in response to being executed, result in a computing device

creating a sub-set of firmware instructions from a set of firmware instructions used to establish a pre-boot environment;

and

executing an error handler of a virtual machine monitor to cause execution of the sub-set of firmware instructions to reconstitute the pre-boot environment in response to an error.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein executing an error handler of a virtual machine monitor comprises executing an error handler of a hypervisor to cause execution of the sub-set of firmware instructions to reconstitute the pre-boot environment in response to the error.

15. A computing device comprising:

a processor, and

a memory device having stored therein a plurality of instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to

execute firmware instructions to establish a pre-boot environment on a computing device;

determine a sub-set of the firmware instructions that provide pre-boot environment services;

store the sub-set of the firmware instructions in a reserved memory location;

execute a hypervisor; and

transfer control from the hypervisor to the sub-set of firmware instructions in response to an error.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein to transfer control from the hypervisor to the sub-set of firmware instructions comprises establishing a guest instance and invoking the sub-set of the firmware instructions in the guest instance.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the error comprises at least one of a system management interrupt and a platform management interrupt.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the sub-set of firmware instructions comprise extensible firmware interface instructions.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the sub-set of firmware instructions includes at least one driver execution environment (DXE) driver.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the plurality of memory instructions further cause the processor to:

store a state of the hypervisor in response to the error, and

restore the state of the hypervisor subsequent to execution of the sub-set of firmware instructions.