I think this is an excellent idea. I have thought thought about this myself also.
I was looking at taking kgdb kernel debugger stub and moving it from the Linux kernel into LinuxBIOS. It would have the advantage that it could trap some hardware events that cause a reset, which are currently overwritten or cleared by the PC BIOS upon reset. A LinuxBIOS debugger could save some extra machine state and send it out the debug (serial) port. This functionality is related to implementing power management in LinuxBIOS - things like STR (suspend to ram) require a reset vector handler that is more intelligent.
A BIOS debugger could also make use of the hardware Break/SMI button to bring up the debugger, even if keyboard and serial port are not responding.
I would find such a system useful. I would encourage you to use existing debuggers if possible (kgdb, or kdb) since the source level debuggers already exist for these (ie emacs) and the project could be completed sooner.
Regards,
Jeremy
----- Original Message ----- From: "王海明" whm_buaa@sina.com To: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:51 AM Subject: I want to write a BIOS debugger.Can you give me some advice?
hi , all, I am a postgraduate student of Beijing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics ( in china , Beijing).
I want to write a BIOS debugger as my graduation article. My plan are as follow: 1. firstly I want to write a debug stub which is INDEPENDENT of
specific Mainchips,
and small enough. The stub can set up a basic environment ( such as RAM initialization, uart initialization). It can also communicate with
the develop PC
through Serial port,and excute the debug command transfered by the
develp PC.
write a source debugger .
-------------------------- serial port | develop | | BIOS |debug stub | ----<---->--------- | pc || |-------------------------- ----------- | | ------------------
the system figure I appreciate some advice about the possibility of my plan . best regards!yours Haiming Wang 王海明 whm_buaa@sina.com 2002-10-30 _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios