If anyone wants an idea for a board to port, something FM2+ would be great as they're still available yet backwards companionable with FM2 (non plus) CPU's that lack PSP.
On 05/08/2017 04:38 PM, WordPress wrote:
The native graphics was reworked a while ago and should finally support Windows. Numerous bug fixes and EDID support is also now available. Finally, the native ram initialization for sandybridge/ivybridge platforms got patched and supports more RAM modules.
Sick! It was annoying not being able to use modesetting on my boards.
Https downloads are the default for all payloads now
Nice, good for slightly better security and to make it more difficult for people to know exactly what you are downloading. Certificate pinning support should be the next step. The debian clearsigner bug is one of the examples as to why https adds another layer of security.
Fighting blobs and proprietary HW componentscoreboot’s ultimate goal would be to replace any closed source firmware stack with free software components. Unfortunately this is not always possible due to signed binaries such as the Intel ME firmware, the AMD PSP and microcode. Recently, a way was discovered to let the Intel ME run in a functional error state and reduce it from 1.5/5MB to 80KB. It’s not perfect but it works from Nehalem up to Skylake based Intel systems. The tool is now integrated into the coreboot build system. The upstream repository is https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner
Another ongoing improvement is the new utility blobtool. It is currently used for generating the flash descriptor and GbE configuration data on older mainboard which are known to be free software. It can easily be extended for different binaries with well-defined specifications.
It would be great if there was a ME blob hash database, I am paranoid of getting a bogus one when I buy stuff off ebay. It sketches me out to use the one from the flash chip that comes with the board, rather than simply a BIOS update etc (I don't know how to extract it successfully) There are rumors of signing keys floating around on the internet.
To further clean things up, starting with the 4.8 release, any platform that does not have a successful boot logged in the board_status repo in the previous year (that is, within the previous two releases) will be removed from the maintained coreboot codebase. Chips that do not have any associated boards will also be removed. These platforms will be announced before the release so that there is time for people to test if desired.
This is not meant to be a high bar, but as a measure to clean up the codebase and eliminate boards and chips that are actually no longer being used. The cleanup will happen just after the release, so the removed platforms will still be available in the release branch if desired. If there is still interest, developers can bring back old chips and boards by porting them to the new tree (and bringing them to current standards).
There should be an easier way for people to test stuff, I myself haven't bothered to do it yet as you need an openid, then a gerrit account, then you need to run a program on the device itself (which is difficult if you are using it as a router/firewall such as on my AM1ML)
If it was a more automated process where an account isn't needed that would encourage more people to do it.
Studies indicate that e-commerce websites that require people to create an account to buy something have a much lower sales conversion rate.