Method and apparatus to support booting despite deficient resources

摘要

A method and related apparatuses support booting despite deficient system resources. In one embodiment, a processing system includes two or more devices in a peripheral connect interface (PCI) subsystem, as well as instructions encoded in a machine accessible medium. The instructions, when executed during a process of booting the processing system, may determine whether sufficient resources are available for the devices. The instructions may also retrieve boot information from an extended firmware interface (EFI) environment of the processing system, and may automatically identify a device as boot-critical, based on that boot information. The instructions may also identify a device to be rejected, and may automatically allocate resources for the boot-critical device but not for the rejected device, before the processing system boots the OS, if sufficient resources for the devices are not available. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
determining, during a process of booting a processing system, whether sufficient resources are available to meet resource requests for multiple devices associated with a peripheral connect interface (PCI) subsystem of the processing system; retrieving boot information from an extended firmware interface (EFI) environment of the processing system; automatically identifying at least one of the multiple devices as boot-critical, based on device path designations included in the boot information retrieved from the EFI environment; automatically determining whether the at least one boot-critical device connects via an intermediary device in the processing system; if the at least one boot-critical device connects via the intermediary device, automatically identifying the intermediary device as a boot critical device; and if sufficient resources to meet the resource requests are not available, automatically allocating resources for devices identified as boot-critical but not for all of the devices associated with the PCI subsystem, before the processing system boots an operating system (OS).