what's the likely hood that i can get coreboot to run on a tyan gpu server?
this one specifically: https://www.tyan.com/Barebones_FT77DB7109_B7109F77DV14HR-2T-NFZ
Hello Michael,
On 11.06.21 18:43, Michael Di Domenico wrote:
what's the likely hood that i can get coreboot to run on a tyan gpu server?
100% if you are willing to do or to pay for what is necessary; with one exception: Tyan might lock you out from running your own firmware with some digital signature verification. I don't know if Tyan does such things.
this one specifically: https://www.tyan.com/Barebones_FT77DB7109_B7109F77DV14HR-2T-NFZ
That would be a huge endeavor. There is some sort of support for Xeon SP platforms in coreboot, but with some caveats: it is heavily blobbed and you need some layers of NDA to make use of the blobs; from a developer perspective you don't get the usual coreboot experience. I don't know these blobs in particular, but sometimes making use of such blobs is more work than replacing them / rewriting the whole support.
Another thing to consider is that Intel likes to put a lot of server- specific features into the firmware that would belong into the OS from a coreboot perspective. Hence, the whole ecosystem isn't really pre- pared for a real coreboot (that is not runtime resident) on such a system. Well, it depends on the OS and what features one needs, I guess.
Nico
Thanks, that's about what i expected. I had a hope that i could salvage some machines which need tweaked bios settings. I've reached out to Tyan, but they're fairly unhelpful
On Mon, Jun 14, 2021 at 6:34 AM Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de wrote:
Hello Michael,
On 11.06.21 18:43, Michael Di Domenico wrote:
what's the likely hood that i can get coreboot to run on a tyan gpu server?
100% if you are willing to do or to pay for what is necessary; with one exception: Tyan might lock you out from running your own firmware with some digital signature verification. I don't know if Tyan does such things.
this one specifically: https://www.tyan.com/Barebones_FT77DB7109_B7109F77DV14HR-2T-NFZ
That would be a huge endeavor. There is some sort of support for Xeon SP platforms in coreboot, but with some caveats: it is heavily blobbed and you need some layers of NDA to make use of the blobs; from a developer perspective you don't get the usual coreboot experience. I don't know these blobs in particular, but sometimes making use of such blobs is more work than replacing them / rewriting the whole support.
Another thing to consider is that Intel likes to put a lot of server- specific features into the firmware that would belong into the OS from a coreboot perspective. Hence, the whole ecosystem isn't really pre- pared for a real coreboot (that is not runtime resident) on such a system. Well, it depends on the OS and what features one needs, I guess.
Nico
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Michael Di Domenico -
Nico Huber