February 2003 - coreboot - mail.coreboot.org

IPMI support in Linux
by Andrew Ip March 26, 2003

March 26, 2003

Does anyone know if IPMI works under LinuxBIOS? AFAIK, there is a Linux driver patch but dunno if it still works under LinuxBIOS. -Andrew -- Andrew Ip Email: aip(a)cwlinux.com Tel: (852) 2542 2046 Fax: (852) 2542 2036 Mobile: (852) 9201 9866 Cwlinux Limited Unit 202B 2/F Lai Cheong Factory Building, 479-479A Castle Peak Road, Lai Chi Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Tel: (852)2542 2046 Fax: (852)2542 2036 For public pgp key, please obtain it from http://www.keyserver.net/en.

6 6

Ram initialization and small c.
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Years ago when C was young and implementations were not readily available people compilers for subsets of C and called then small C compilers. Currently one of the greatest challenges in LinuxBIOS is to write ram initialization code. On x86 this is all done in 8 general purpose registers. And it takes about a 1000 lines of assembly per memory controller, to do a good job and handle all of the auto-configuration cases. Debugging the assembly is bad as frequently adding the debug code breaks the code we are trying to debug. Additionally there is no code reuse between the two binaries that make up LinuxBIOS as one is in C and the other in assembly. By this point I have enough practice I am good at writing the assembly code, that I think it hardly matters. But I have seen several proficient coders just grind to a halt when confronted with miles of assembly. So what I propose is to write a small C compiler for LinuxBIOS. Various reports from ages past put it at about a man-month of effort to get the first version going. And it may be better than that as there are a couple of places I can copy code from. tcc, lcc, gcc, and other small c projects. Up until this point all C compilers have had an assumption that you can have a stack. And most simple C compilers have kept none of the data structures needed to do inline and similar optimizations that are necessary when you don't have ram. So I think it is easiest to build up something very simple from scratch. That is the route I am going to try. No promises, but I should start a trial implementation soon. Ron. I am going to need to do a branch soon as I do the Hammer port and integrate a small C compiler. And I want to make some clean fixes and remove some of the backwards compatibility cruft, and the linuxbios 1.0 code base is an inappropriate place to target. It should be possible to roll in most of the improvements into the 1.0 codebase, but that will just increase the clutter of the codebase. Eric

10 48

Re: [9fans] Off the shelves plan9-compatible desktop (fwd)
by Ronald G. Minnich March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

could this be the long-awaited linuxbios laptop? I think most of those chips work ... ron ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:12:55 +0000 From: Derek Fawcus <dfawcus(a)cisco.com> Reply-To: 9fans(a)cse.psu.edu To: 9fans(a)cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Off the shelves plan9-compatible desktop On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 04:18:51PM +0900, okamoto(a)granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp wrote: > As I got tired of debugging, I travelled into internet, and found > Lindows Mobile PC, which may be nice also to Plan 9. > However, I cann't figure it out whether it has 3 button mouse pad. > It looks like so... > 12.1" 1024x768 TFT > VIA C3 933 MHz Processor, <--- what's that? An x86 compatible processor made by VIA. It has poor FPU performance but reasonable integer performance. It's basically an i686 but with a semi implemented CMOV instruction. > VIA VT8606(Twister-T) + VT82C686B chipset, > Savage 4 AGP (which Russ's favurite chip?), > Realtek 10/100 LAN chip, > 20GB ATA HDD > Lindows3.0 OS <---- what's it? A Linux derived OS > 10.43x8.66x0.91" AND 2.9lbs (1.6kg)! > > any opinion? well if I was in the market for a laptop, I might well buy one... however, what I'd really like is a light enougth pad computer - all that I've seen so far are too heavy. DF

2 1

Suggestions
by Nathanael Noblet March 3, 2003

March 3, 2003

Hello, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestion of any boards that are supported by linuxbios and have AGP graphics, audio and possibly onboard network (though eventually I'd like to add wireless networking instead). In a small form factor, like a SBC type setup. If you do that would be great. -- Nathanael Noblet Gnat Solutions 4604 Monterey Ave NW Calgary, AB T3B 5K4 T/F 403.288.5360 C 403.809.5368 http://www.gnat.ca/

2 3

About ADLO
by Xavier Pegenaute March 1, 2003

March 1, 2003

Hi again, i'm not sure of how ADLO work ..., to work with ADLO, i need a Matsonic motherboard with a LinuxBios installed, once time i have this, i make the new elf file with a bios of Bochs and a Video Bios, and after i put these files overwriting the LinuxBios ..? or Adding these files to rom bios ?, if i add i'll have two bios code runing (first of the LinuxBios, and after of Bochs) is not there problems with it ?. Really is possible make work the Bochs Bios like a normal Bios ..?, they have code that only work with Bochs, like an outport to INFO_PORT ... Regards. Xavi.

2 1

LinuxBIOS Laptop
by Bari Ari Feb. 28, 2003

Feb. 28, 2003

Here's a nice candidate to build a LinuxBIOS laptop. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1046444411 The site is currently /.ed but the specs are: ECS announced recently its DeskNote i-Buddie A980 mobile desktop PC, the first ever mobile barebone computer. It features no display, no CPU, no RAM and no HDD, but only the case with keyboard and touchpad. The indisputable trump of the novelty is that you are free to install the most high-end and cutting-edge hardware, or you may buy not really expensive components that are enough for your needs. Here is the list of i-Buddie A980 technical peculiarities: * Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533MHz FSB with 3.06GHz clock-speed and above; * SiS650 chipset with SiS962 I/O controller; * 1 DIMM slot for up to 1GB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory. * Integrated graphics core, ability to install NVIDIA GeForce4 Go420 mobile graphics card. * 2-channel ATA-100/66/33 integrated controller; * Includes an 8x DVD-ROM drive; * Free bay for 2.5 HDD; * 4 USB 2.0 ports; * FireWire (IEEE1394) port ; * IR port with transfer rate up to 115.2Kbit/s; * 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet adapter and connector; * Integrated 56K modem; * 6-channel audio solution and built-in speakers; * Size: 342mm (W) x 300mm (D) x 34mm(min)/50.5mm(max); * Weight: 1.8Kg. End-users have a lot of opportunities to expand and configure such computers, they even now can choose between 14 and 15 TFT panel, what should allow ECS customers to get the most cost-effective solutions possible. According to this French web-site, such barebones will be priced at $300. Not expensive, I believe, but remember that you will need to get a display, a microprocessor, a memory module and a hard disk drive to make it functional. Bari

1 0

flash_rom.c
by Mark Wilkinson Feb. 28, 2003

Feb. 28, 2003

Hello I'm not sure who this should be addressed to, so appologies to the rest of the list. Briefly, I'm interested in running linuxBios on a via epia board, so I've gotten hold of a bios saviour ready to see how far I can get. After compiling up a rom image, and scanning the archives for how to burn the flash from linux, I compiled up the flash_rom program from the util directory. When running it with no image name (just so I could identify the flash chip of the bios saviour) I was greeted with a segmentation fault. To cut the story short, it seems that after scanning the pci bus in enable_flash_write() and not finding any of the devices in the enables (enable still set to 0) it still tries to call the 'doit' routine. I've included a patch that corrects the problem. Hope it's of use to someone. The second question I have (I think this is for Ron or Eric) is about the Config file under src/arch/i386/lib. I've notice that it has two copies of the 'object c_start.S' line. Is there a reason for this ? I've noticed that the NLBConfig.py script generates warnings about re-defining the object. Regards Mark Wilkinson --- orig/util/flash_and_burn/flash_rom.c Fri Feb 28 17:21:37 2003 +++ freebios/util/flash_rom.c Fri Feb 28 20:56:55 2003 @@ -291,7 +291,8 @@ } /* now do the deed. */ - enable->doit(dev, enable->name); + if ( enable ) + enable->doit(dev, enable->name); return 0; }

1 0

flashrom
by Xavier Pegenaute Feb. 27, 2003

Feb. 27, 2003

Hi, normally when a mainboard's specification say that has 2Mb of Flash ROM, are 2Mbits or Mbytes ..? Regards. Xavi.

4 3

(no subject)
by zhu shi song Feb. 27, 2003

Feb. 27, 2003

can you copy irq_tables to 0xf0000 on your mainboard? thanks --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more

3 16

Amptron 3787CLM - will donate hardware for support
by ziegast＠vix.com Feb. 26, 2003

Feb. 26, 2003

Note: I'd normally use the linuxbios.org web page submission form, but the form is not working, and there is no contact info that looked readily available. The list isn't a bad place to find people willing to work on new hardware, so here goes... I found some cheap motherboards from Amptron that make an ideal terminal server or low-power workstation. It's the PIII-3787CLM+. You might recognize the motherboard if you bought one of those $199 Fry's/Walmart PCs recently. The motherboard + 733MHz Via C3 costs about $70 retail. It comes with just about everything you need for a desktop: AGP Video, AC97 sound, 10/100 Ethernet, and USB. All I need to do is add a floppy drive, some RAM, and then boot. Motherboard specs: http://www.amptron.com/html/MotherboardP3_M787CL+_frame.html I plan to use the motherboard on desktops (LTSP and/or diskless NFS-based RedHat 8.0) and some servers (add more RAM and maybe a a uDMA drive or two). I'd really like to just boot Linux off the BIOS to make boot times faster and have one less moving part to fail. If the BIOS supported USB boot drives, I'd just get a keychain drive and be done. The built-in Ethernet doesn't PXEboot, so LinuxBIOS looks like the only way to get rid of the floppy. I'd be glad to donate a montherboard ($70 retail value each) to anyone who can get one of them to boot to become either a LTSP client or a diskless Linux workstation (initrd root + NFS /usr) without the use of a floppy disk. I'll throw in a $20 256MB DIMM for fun. The label on the BIOS chip reads: "686 AMIBIOS (C)1999 BS46". The Amptron web page states it's 2MB "Flash". I don't know how this compares to DiskOnChip, but it's my preference not to have to buy/install DOC if I can avoid it. Reading the Sis630 LinuxBIOS HOWTO, I don't feel confident in my ability to get it to work on new unsupported hardware. If you think you can get it to work, drop me a line. If you can make a public HOWTO document for me and others to install LinuxBIOS on the board (without buying DiskOnChip), you can keep your parts. If it's not possible, let me know. I really like the hardware becasue it's an excellent, low-power (25W), cheap desktop platform. It could also be a part of dense low-bandwidth low-power server clusters. Eric Ziegast San Diego, CA ziegast(a)vix.com 619-994-UNIX (cell) Some info off a system on which I installed RedHat 8.0... # lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 630 Host (rev 21) 00:00.1 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0) 00:01.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 00:01.1 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 83) 00:01.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 07) 00:01.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 07) 00:02.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5591/5592 AGP 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS630 GUI Accelerator+3D (rev 21) # dmesg Linux version 2.4.18-14 (bhcompile(a)stripples.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) #1 Wed Sep 4 11:57:57 EDT 2002 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable) BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fdf0000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 000000000fdf0000 - 000000000fdf8000 (ACPI data) BIOS-e820: 000000000fdf8000 - 000000000fe00000 (ACPI NVS) BIOS-e820: 00000000ffef0000 - 00000000fff00000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved) 253MB LOWMEM available. On node 0 totalpages: 65008 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 60912 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ Initializing CPU#0 Detected 735.006 MHz processor. Speakup v-1.00 CVS: Tue Jun 11 14:22:53 EDT 2002 : initialized Console: colour VGA+ 80x25 Calibrating delay loop... 1468.00 BogoMIPS Memory: 251216k/260032k available (1193k kernel code, 6400k reserved, 984k data, 200k init, 0k highmem) Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok. Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) Inode cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) Mount cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) ramfs: mounted with options: <defaults> ramfs: max_pages=31655 max_file_pages=0 max_inodes=0 max_dentries=31655 Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes) Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 00803035 80803035 00000000, vendor = 5 CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (32 bytes/line), D cache 64K (32 bytes/line) CPU: L2 Cache: 64K (32 bytes/line) CPU: After vendor init, caps: 00803135 80803035 00000000 00000000 CPU: After generic, caps: 00803135 80803035 00000000 00000000 CPU: Common caps: 00803135 80803035 00000000 00000000 CPU: Centaur VIA Samuel 2 stepping 03 Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch(a)atnf.csiro.au) mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd9f8, last bus=1 PCI: Using configuration type 1 PCI: Probing PCI hardware PCI: Using IRQ router SIS [1039/0008] at 00:01.0 isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards... isapnp: No Plug & Play device found speakup: initialized device: /dev/synth, node (MAJOR 10, MINOR 25) Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 Initializing RT netlink socket apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16) Starting kswapd VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e block: 480 slots per queue, batch=120 Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31 ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx SIS5513: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 01 PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:00.1. Please try using pci=biosirq. SIS5513: chipset revision 208 SIS5513: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later SiS630 ATA 66 controller ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA hda: WDC WD200BB-60DGA0, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 hda: 39102336 sectors (20020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=2434/255/63, UDMA(66) ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 floppy0: no floppy controllers found NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46 RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27 md: Autodetecting RAID arrays. md: autorun ... md: ... autorun DONE. NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 32768) Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 Freeing initrd memory: 127k freed VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). Journalled Block Device driver loaded kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Freeing unused kernel memory: 200k freed usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs usb.c: registered new driver hub PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:01.3 PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:01.2 usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xd0844000, IRQ 10 usb-ohci.c: usb-00:01.3, Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (#2) usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 hub.c: USB hub found hub.c: 2 ports detected PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:01.2 PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:01.3 usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xd0846000, IRQ 10 usb-ohci.c: usb-00:01.2, Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 hub.c: USB hub found hub.c: 3 ports detected usb.c: registered new driver hiddev usb.c: registered new driver hid hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech(a)suse.cz> hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.18, 14 May 2002 on ide0(3,2), internal journal Adding Swap: 522104k swap-space (priority -1) kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.18, 14 May 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. ohci1394: pci_module_init failed ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team sis900.c: v1.08.04 4/25/2002 PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:01.1 divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0 eth0: SiS 900 Internal MII PHY transceiver found at address 1. eth0: Using transceiver found at address 1 as default eth0: SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet at 0xde00, IRQ 11, 00:07:95:35:88:b1. eth0: Media Link On 100mbps half-duplex

3 2