[Fullquote because it seems Stefan's mail mail did not end up on the list by accident.]
On 06.03.2010 23:39, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
On 3/6/10 7:26 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
Just having it as a FILO add-on would be the best solution. Then it can use all the FILO infrastructure (reading lots of filesystems, using a recovery with a nice menu on a USB stick,
OTOH, it could simply be an ELF loaded by FILO. That allows upgrades of flashrom as needed, and if FILO can load flash images from any media, it should be able to do the same with executable code.
Unless FILO gets a full blown linker, that ELF file would need a full blown VFS, IDE driver, FS drivers, USB stack, ....
But yes, maybe doing run time linking at firmware time is what we want to do, after all...
Assuming the addresses of symbols in FILO/libpayload are known at compile/link (well, prelink) time of flashrom, it should be possible to offer prelinked ELF files to FILO without needing any linker in FILO. This would be similar to the linking of initram and stage2 in coreboot v3. Or we make sure FILO is able to write out a symbol table over serial or to disk. That symbol table can then be used by a linker on another machine to link flashrom, and then a linked flashrom can be supplied to FILO. I could try to dig up my symbol-table-in-LAR patches for v3.
That's surely an interesting project regardless of how we implement it.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
The EFI lesson: if you're going to put an OS in FLASH, at least make it a good one.
Otherwise, you get EFI.
Be careful where you're going here. You're starting to verge on creating an OS. If you get that far, at least look at what's out there before you go too much further.
ron
On 08.03.2010 17:35, ron minnich wrote:
The EFI lesson: if you're going to put an OS in FLASH, at least make it a good one.
Otherwise, you get EFI.
Great quote. May I use that as new signature?
Be careful where you're going here. You're starting to verge on creating an OS. If you get that far, at least look at what's out there before you go too much further.
In my very humble opinion, a complete flashrom in flash is not a desirable idea with today's flash sizes and the other restrictions associated with flashing. Either you can load flash images from disk/whatever, and then it should be possible to boot an OS which can run flashrom. Or you can't load flash images from disk/whatever, and then flashrom in flash has nothing to flash.
I do care about good design, but if an employer tells me to use a design I disagree with, I won't refuse to use that design. If this becomes a GSoC project, the success of the student (me?) essentially depends on what the mentor thinks is good, so the situation is similar to a workplace.
Some people want an all-singing, all-dancing BIOS/bootloader with BIOS settings screen, flashrom, a splash screen video, maybe a builtin game and a disk formatter. If you can thow in a web browser (based on any personal favourite self-written incomplete closed source not-an-operating-system (you know which one I mean)), even better. Throw in some fan control scripts which can make the fans sing and let useful LEDs on the board blink in patterns synchronized to the music. A sizable part of the overclocking/modding crowd will _love_ such a thing regardless of technical merits because it is "cool" and perfect for bragging.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:35 AM, ron minnich rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
The EFI lesson: if you're going to put an OS in FLASH, at least make it a good one.
Otherwise, you get EFI.
Be careful where you're going here. You're starting to verge on creating an OS. If you get that far, at least look at what's out there before you go too much further.
I may have missed too much of this thread, but I thought it started out as a "recovery" method. If it doesn't work well enough to load Linux, why could it load other things?
I thought the point was that you want to be able to recover when only serial works. Lots of things can fail between then and loading a payload.
Thanks, Myles
On 3/8/10 6:21 PM, Myles Watson wrote:
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:35 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com mailto:rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
The EFI lesson: if you're going to put an OS in FLASH, at least make it a good one. Otherwise, you get EFI. Be careful where you're going here. You're starting to verge on creating an OS. If you get that far, at least look at what's out there before you go too much further.
I may have missed too much of this thread, but I thought it started out as a "recovery" method. If it doesn't work well enough to load Linux, why could it load other things?
Because Linux needs a lot more stuff than anything else. APIC setup, interrupts going, ...
I thought the point was that you want to be able to recover when only serial works. Lots of things can fail between then and loading a payload.
No, the point is really to get normal going without an OS after normal is misflashed, with only fallback left.
If you're beyond that point you're a coreboot hacker and want a replacement flash chip or some more convenient methods to recover anyways.
Stefan
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Stefan Reinauer stepan@coresystems.dewrote:
On 3/8/10 6:21 PM, Myles Watson wrote:
I thought the point was that you want to be able to recover when only serial works. Lots of things can fail between then and loading a payload.
No, the point is really to get normal going without an OS after normal is misflashed, with only fallback left.
That's what I was missing. Thanks.
If you're beyond that point you're a coreboot hacker and want a replacement
flash chip or some more convenient methods to recover anyways.
I was thinking of Ron's clusters, too.
Thanks, Myles
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Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Myles Watson -
ron minnich -
Stefan Reinauer