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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+.. _bootconfig:
+
+==================
+Boot Configuration
+==================
+
+:Author: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
+
+Overview
+========
+
+The boot configuration expands the current kernel command line to support
+additional key-value data when booting the kernel in an efficient way.
+This allows administrators to pass a structured-Key config file.
+
+Config File Syntax
+==================
+
+The boot config syntax is a simple structured key-value. Each key consists
+of dot-connected-words, and key and value are connected by ``=``. The value
+has to be terminated by semi-colon (``;``) or newline (``\n``).
+For array value, array entries are separated by comma (``,``). ::
+
+  KEY[.WORD[...]] = VALUE[, VALUE2[...]][;]
+
+Unlike the kernel command line syntax, spaces are OK around the comma and ``=``.
+
+Each key word must contain only alphabets, numbers, dash (``-``) or underscore
+(``_``). And each value only contains printable characters or spaces except
+for delimiters such as semi-colon (``;``), new-line (``\n``), comma (``,``),
+hash (``#``) and closing brace (``}``).
+
+If you want to use those delimiters in a value, you can use either double-
+quotes (``"VALUE"``) or single-quotes (``'VALUE'``) to quote it. Note that
+you can not escape these quotes.
+
+There can be a key which doesn't have value or has an empty value. Those keys
+are used for checking if the key exists or not (like a boolean).
+
+Key-Value Syntax
+----------------
+
+The boot config file syntax allows user to merge partially same word keys
+by brace. For example::
+
+ foo.bar.baz = value1
+ foo.bar.qux.quux = value2
+
+These can be written also in::
+
+ foo.bar {
+    baz = value1
+    qux.quux = value2
+ }
+
+Or more shorter, written as following::
+
+ foo.bar { baz = value1; qux.quux = value2 }
+
+In both styles, same key words are automatically merged when parsing it
+at boot time. So you can append similar trees or key-values.
+
+Same-key Values
+---------------
+
+It is prohibited that two or more values or arrays share a same-key.
+For example,::
+
+ foo = bar, baz
+ foo = qux  # !ERROR! we can not re-define same key
+
+If you want to update the value, you must use the override operator
+``:=`` explicitly. For example::
+
+ foo = bar, baz
+ foo := qux
+
+then, the ``qux`` is assigned to ``foo`` key. This is useful for
+overriding the default value by adding (partial) custom bootconfigs
+without parsing the default bootconfig.
+
+If you want to append the value to existing key as an array member,
+you can use ``+=`` operator. For example::
+
+ foo = bar, baz
+ foo += qux
+
+In this case, the key ``foo`` has ``bar``, ``baz`` and ``qux``.
+
+Moreover, sub-keys and a value can coexist under a parent key.
+For example, following config is allowed.::
+
+ foo = value1
+ foo.bar = value2
+ foo := value3 # This will update foo's value.
+
+Note, since there is no syntax to put a raw value directly under a
+structured key, you have to define it outside of the brace. For example::
+
+ foo {
+     bar = value1
+     bar {
+         baz = value2
+         qux = value3
+     }
+ }
+
+Also, the order of the value node under a key is fixed. If there
+are a value and subkeys, the value is always the first child node
+of the key. Thus if user specifies subkeys first, e.g.::
+
+ foo.bar = value1
+ foo = value2
+
+In the program (and /proc/bootconfig), it will be shown as below::
+
+ foo = value2
+ foo.bar = value1
+
+Comments
+--------
+
+The config syntax accepts shell-script style comments. The comments starting
+with hash ("#") until newline ("\n") will be ignored.
+
+::
+
+ # comment line
+ foo = value # value is set to foo.
+ bar = 1, # 1st element
+       2, # 2nd element
+       3  # 3rd element
+
+This is parsed as below::
+
+ foo = value
+ bar = 1, 2, 3
+
+Note that you can not put a comment between value and delimiter(``,`` or
+``;``). This means following config has a syntax error ::
+
+ key = 1 # comment
+       ,2
+
+
+/proc/bootconfig
+================
+
+/proc/bootconfig is a user-space interface of the boot config.
+Unlike /proc/cmdline, this file shows the key-value style list.
+Each key-value pair is shown in each line with following style::
+
+ KEY[.WORDS...] = "[VALUE]"[,"VALUE2"...]
+
+
+Boot Kernel With a Boot Config
+==============================
+
+There are two options to boot the kernel with bootconfig: attaching the
+bootconfig to the initrd image or embedding it in the kernel itself.
+
+Attaching a Boot Config to Initrd
+---------------------------------
+
+Since the boot configuration file is loaded with initrd by default,
+it will be added to the end of the initrd (initramfs) image file with
+padding, size, checksum and 12-byte magic word as below.
+
+[initrd][bootconfig][padding][size(le32)][checksum(le32)][#BOOTCONFIG\n]
+
+The size and checksum fields are unsigned 32bit little endian value.
+
+When the boot configuration is added to the initrd image, the total
+file size is aligned to 4 bytes. To fill the gap, null characters
+(``\0``) will be added. Thus the ``size`` is the length of the bootconfig
+file + padding bytes.
+
+The Linux kernel decodes the last part of the initrd image in memory to
+get the boot configuration data.
+Because of this "piggyback" method, there is no need to change or
+update the boot loader and the kernel image itself as long as the boot
+loader passes the correct initrd file size. If by any chance, the boot
+loader passes a longer size, the kernel fails to find the bootconfig data.
+
+To do this operation, Linux kernel provides ``bootconfig`` command under
+tools/bootconfig, which allows admin to apply or delete the config file
+to/from initrd image. You can build it by the following command::
+
+ # make -C tools/bootconfig
+
+To add your boot config file to initrd image, run bootconfig as below
+(Old data is removed automatically if exists)::
+
+ # tools/bootconfig/bootconfig -a your-config /boot/initrd.img-X.Y.Z
+
+To remove the config from the image, you can use -d option as below::
+
+ # tools/bootconfig/bootconfig -d /boot/initrd.img-X.Y.Z
+
+Then add "bootconfig" on the normal kernel command line to tell the
+kernel to look for the bootconfig at the end of the initrd file.
+
+Embedding a Boot Config into Kernel
+-----------------------------------
+
+If you can not use initrd, you can also embed the bootconfig file in the
+kernel by Kconfig options. In this case, you need to recompile the kernel
+with the following configs::
+
+ CONFIG_BOOT_CONFIG_EMBED=y
+ CONFIG_BOOT_CONFIG_EMBED_FILE="/PATH/TO/BOOTCONFIG/FILE"
+
+``CONFIG_BOOT_CONFIG_EMBED_FILE`` requires an absolute path or a relative
+path to the bootconfig file from source tree or object tree.
+The kernel will embed it as the default bootconfig.
+
+Just as when attaching the bootconfig to the initrd, you need ``bootconfig``
+option on the kernel command line to enable the embedded bootconfig.
+
+Note that even if you set this option, you can override the embedded
+bootconfig by another bootconfig which attached to the initrd.
+
+Kernel parameters via Boot Config
+=================================
+
+In addition to the kernel command line, the boot config can be used for
+passing the kernel parameters. All the key-value pairs under ``kernel``
+key will be passed to kernel cmdline directly. Moreover, the key-value
+pairs under ``init`` will be passed to init process via the cmdline.
+The parameters are concatinated with user-given kernel cmdline string
+as the following order, so that the command line parameter can override
+bootconfig parameters (this depends on how the subsystem handles parameters
+but in general, earlier parameter will be overwritten by later one.)::
+
+ [bootconfig params][cmdline params] -- [bootconfig init params][cmdline init params]
+
+Here is an example of the bootconfig file for kernel/init parameters.::
+
+ kernel {
+   root = 01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcd
+ }
+ init {
+  splash
+ }
+
+This will be copied into the kernel cmdline string as the following::
+
+ root="01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcd" -- splash
+
+If user gives some other command line like,::
+
+ ro bootconfig -- quiet
+
+The final kernel cmdline will be the following::
+
+ root="01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcd" ro bootconfig -- splash quiet
+
+
+Config File Limitation
+======================
+
+Currently the maximum config size size is 32KB and the total key-words (not
+key-value entries) must be under 1024 nodes.
+Note: this is not the number of entries but nodes, an entry must consume
+more than 2 nodes (a key-word and a value). So theoretically, it will be
+up to 512 key-value pairs. If keys contains 3 words in average, it can
+contain 256 key-value pairs. In most cases, the number of config items
+will be under 100 entries and smaller than 8KB, so it would be enough.
+If the node number exceeds 1024, parser returns an error even if the file
+size is smaller than 32KB. (Note that this maximum size is not including
+the padding null characters.)
+Anyway, since bootconfig command verifies it when appending a boot config
+to initrd image, user can notice it before boot.
+
+
+Bootconfig APIs
+===============
+
+User can query or loop on key-value pairs, also it is possible to find
+a root (prefix) key node and find key-values under that node.
+
+If you have a key string, you can query the value directly with the key
+using xbc_find_value(). If you want to know what keys exist in the boot
+config, you can use xbc_for_each_key_value() to iterate key-value pairs.
+Note that you need to use xbc_array_for_each_value() for accessing
+each array's value, e.g.::
+
+ vnode = NULL;
+ xbc_find_value("key.word", &vnode);
+ if (vnode && xbc_node_is_array(vnode))
+    xbc_array_for_each_value(vnode, value) {
+      printk("%s ", value);
+    }
+
+If you want to focus on keys which have a prefix string, you can use
+xbc_find_node() to find a node by the prefix string, and iterate
+keys under the prefix node with xbc_node_for_each_key_value().
+
+But the most typical usage is to get the named value under prefix
+or get the named array under prefix as below::
+
+ root = xbc_find_node("key.prefix");
+ value = xbc_node_find_value(root, "option", &vnode);
+ ...
+ xbc_node_for_each_array_value(root, "array-option", value, anode) {
+    ...
+ }
+
+This accesses a value of "key.prefix.option" and an array of
+"key.prefix.array-option".
+
+Locking is not needed, since after initialization, the config becomes
+read-only. All data and keys must be copied if you need to modify it.
+
+
+Functions and structures
+========================
+
+.. kernel-doc:: include/linux/bootconfig.h
+.. kernel-doc:: lib/bootconfig.c
+