I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
I also can't stress enough how important an up-to-date and well maintaned list of linuxbios compatible motherboards is to the success of the project. If people don't know which hardware linuxbios will work on, people won't ever try it. This is a absolutely necessary resource. How-to's for different motherboards should also be made more publicly available.
jamie.
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Alan Mimms wrote:
I think it would be MOST helpful if the linuxbios web site reflected true and accurate recent information. It appears to be very out of date and doesn't even say how to get to freebios2 IIRC. If I knew more of what WAS true and correct, I would offer to help update the site. But alas, I am just lurking on this mailing list and absorbing what I can...
Alan Mimms, Senior Architect F5 Networks, Inc. Spokane Development Center Liberty Lake, Washington v: 509-343-3524 f: 509-343-3501
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org] On Behalf Of Bari Ari Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 8:40 AM To: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: Re: new free software foundation crusade: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html Importance: Low
Also on Slashdot earlier today:
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/02/28/1126226.shtml Stallman Calls For Action on Free BIOS
Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
if you see errors let me know (I did not write this but they will take input). I know the comment about linuxbios being stripped-down linux
is
not quite right; anything else?
Nevertheless it is really great to see the FSF weigh in on this issue.
If your company is a supporter of linuxbios, or other free bioses such
as
U-boot etc., then you should definitely contact the FSF and get your
name
listed.
ron _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I'm willing to have someone else take it over. I have no problems with this.
ron
I am very new to this whole project and have never actually used linuxbios myself (I'm trying to get started, which prompted my previous rant), but I would be more than happy to help maintain the web page to the extent that I'm capable. How can people help?
jamie.
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I'm willing to have someone else take it over. I have no problems with this.
ron
I'm willing to help in any way with the site. I've been meaning to get back into my remote-controlled epia project with linuxbios2 ever since my old board went up in flames. Someone needs to diagram where the site is right now and plot a course for where it needs to go. My current day job is Windows .NET stuff and it sucks. David
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I'm willing to have someone else take it over. I have no problems with this.
ron
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Ron,
At least your update the MB support list at first.
V1: .....
V2: .....
YH
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:12:33 -0700 (MST), Ronald G. Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I'm willing to have someone else take it over. I have no problems with this.
ron _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Ron,
The offer still stands to host SVN for the freebios trees as well as host linuxbios.org, plan9.net, etc....I think the server is close to being ready. We'll have to figure out how to best transfer the CVS history over to SVN -- I've heard the tools for that are not the best.
-JE
On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 10:12 -0700, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I'm willing to have someone else take it over. I have no problems with this.
ron _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Josh England wrote:
The offer still stands to host SVN for the freebios trees as well as host linuxbios.org, plan9.net, etc....I think the server is close to being ready. We'll have to figure out how to best transfer the CVS history over to SVN -- I've heard the tools for that are not the best.
good stuff. I think linuxbios.org web pages will be somewhere but SVN would be nice on the sandia.org host.
ron
"Ronald G. Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov writes:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Josh England wrote:
The offer still stands to host SVN for the freebios trees as well as host linuxbios.org, plan9.net, etc....I think the server is close to being ready. We'll have to figure out how to best transfer the CVS history over to SVN -- I've heard the tools for that are not the best.
good stuff. I think linuxbios.org web pages will be somewhere but SVN would be nice on the sandia.org host.
For the web pages I don't care. But for the sources I SVN does not solve one of our major problems: Multiple repositories.
Because of the NDA issues inherent in doing LinuxBIOS support before a chipset is released, and because of forks needed to ensure quality board ports that vendors can support I don't see multiple repositories going away.
So arch aka tla appears to be the sane way to go. It can act as a shared repository with multiple commiters. It also handles forks well. Arch among other things is drop dead simple to setup. Pretty much you need an ssh account that you can place all of your developers public keys in .ssh/authorized_keys. From there all of the logic happens remotely with sftp. Stefan can probably testify to that a little more than I can.
I am in the process of prototyping it internally to verify that everything works properly. I have already converted my internal linuxbios tree with 903 changesets. And have just started doing a little bit of development on it. So far all of the important cases involving multiple branches and multiple repositories seem to work and are relatively easy to handle.
The big plus of something like this is it will be a lot less work for me to push my changes to the public tree so everyone will get them sooner.
The latest version of cscvs is not perfect but it does do an adequate job of converting a cvs repository into an arch repository. You just have to be very patient with it :) It took about 8 hours to convert my internal tree.
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
Eric
* Eric W. Biederman ebiederman@lnxi.com [050304 06:02]:
For the web pages I don't care. But for the sources I SVN does not solve one of our major problems: Multiple repositories.
With the Wiki the web page issue has solved.
So arch aka tla appears to be the sane way to go. It can act as a shared repository with multiple commiters. It also handles forks well. Arch among other things is drop dead simple to setup. Pretty much you need an ssh account that you can place all of your developers public keys in .ssh/authorized_keys. From there all of the logic happens remotely with sftp. Stefan can probably testify to that a little more than I can.
Either the authorized_key or a gate keeper can be used.
I am in the process of prototyping it internally to verify that everything works properly. I have already converted my internal linuxbios tree with 903 changesets. And have just started doing a little bit of development on it. So far all of the important cases involving multiple branches and multiple repositories seem to work and are relatively easy to handle.
after solving the usual python issues I have cscvs working nicely here as well. I am in the progress of setting up a tla version of the repository that is publicly available on openbios.org. It will also be fed into the repository browser viewarch
Which one are you using? I have: hun@n-dimensional.de--2005-public/cscvs--hun--1.2
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
Let the public import finish and then have a look at the repository on openbios.org. There you can play and find out if you like it.
Stefan
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
by all means!
ron
* Ronald G. Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov [050304 17:39]:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
by all means!
The repository is there now.
Note: The caches have not been built on the server, so viewarch is reaaaally slow. This will change soon.
freebios2: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
freebios: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
Stefan Reinauer stepan@openbios.org writes:
- Ronald G. Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov [050304 17:39]:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
by all means!
The repository is there now.
Note: The caches have not been built on the server, so viewarch is reaaaally slow. This will change soon.
freebios2: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
freebios: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
Stefan I have not looked at it yet but could you look at signing your tree. That is something we need for a public tree.
Eric
On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 10:48, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
- Ronald G. Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov [050304 17:39]:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
by all means!
The repository is there now.
Note: The caches have not been built on the server, so viewarch is reaaaally slow. This will change soon.
freebios2: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
freebios: http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/free...
what is the tla command for
cvs -d:xxx login cvs -d:xxx co freebios2
Ollie
Li-Ta Lo ollie@lanl.gov writes:
what is the tla command for
cvs -d:xxx login cvs -d:xxx co freebios2
tla register-archive ftp://ftp.openbios.org/pub/arch/stepan@openbios.org--devel tla get -A stepan@openbios.org--devel freebios--devel--2.0
For more information look at: http://www.openbios.org/experience/gnuarch.html http://wiki.gnuarch.org/
Eric
* Eric W. Biederman ebiederman@lnxi.com [050308 20:20]:
For more information look at: http://www.openbios.org/experience/gnuarch.html http://wiki.gnuarch.org/
Especially this part of the wiki is probably interesting: http://wiki.gnuarch.org/moin.cgi/Learning_20Arch_20commands_20for_20CVS_20us...
Stefan
* Li-Ta Lo ollie@lanl.gov [050308 20:13]:
stepan@openbios.org--devel/freebios--devel--2.0
what is the tla command for
cvs -d:xxx login cvs -d:xxx co freebios2
You would do:
* once (preperation to use arch in general and on the openbios.org repos):
# make TLA know about you tla my-id "Li-Ta Lo ollie@lanl.gov"
# make TLA know about where to find the code tla register-archive ftp://ftp.openbios.org/pub/arch/stepan@openbios.org--devel
# register key wget http://www.openbios.org/~stepan/gpg/openbios-arch.pub gpg --import openbios-arch.pub
* then everytime you do a fresh checkout:
tla get stepan@openbios.org--devel/freebios--devel--2.0 freebios2
will fetch the tree calling the target directory freebios2
Stefan
"Ronald G. Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov writes:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Ron does this sound like something you would be willing to look at?
by all means!
I'm in the prep stages of merging my tree with Stefan's. This first merge is going to be as bad anything I have done before but after that things should be much easier.
I have managed to check Stefan's pgp signatures on his tree and everything looks good there :)
The next piece to investigate is how we plan on publishing and committing changes. The bread and butter of a version control system. Ron are you far enough along in playing with arch that you are ready for that piece of the conversation?
Eric
* Eric W. Biederman ebiederman@lnxi.com [050308 10:37]:
The next piece to investigate is how we plan on publishing and committing changes. The bread and butter of a version control system. Ron are you far enough along in playing with arch that you are ready for that piece of the conversation?
http://www.openbios.org/experience/gnuarch.html and http://www.openbios.org/cgi-bin/viewarch.cgi/stepan@openbios.org--devel/
will likely help a bit. Got to add a commit section (which is fairly easy, doing "tla commit" and maybe some hints for branching and merging.)
We could either use pqm or add ssh keys for each commiter. How many are there currently?
Stefan
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
We could either use pqm or add ssh keys for each commiter. How many are there currently?
I think maybe 8 or so active.
ron
Can we put the server in US instead of EU?
YH
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 07:23:50 -0700 (MST), Ronald G. Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
We could either use pqm or add ssh keys for each commiter. How many are there currently?
I think maybe 8 or so active.
ron _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
* yhlu yinghailu@gmail.com [050308 18:56]:
Can we put the server in US instead of EU?
YH
The machine is hanging off the second hop from the Frankfurt backbone over to the US, 7 hops from tyan.com... This should be a _lot_ faster than sourceforge.net
Have you had throughput/latency problems?
Stefan
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
The next piece to investigate is how we plan on publishing and committing changes. The bread and butter of a version control system. Ron are you far enough along in playing with arch that you are ready for that piece of the conversation?
nope. Have not had time to look as I have been sick. Fooey.
The only issue I worry about is making sure that vendors have One Place To Go for as they do know (i.e. sourceforge.net). It seems to me that openbios.org could be that place. Sound ok?
ron
"Ronald G. Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov writes:
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
The next piece to investigate is how we plan on publishing and committing changes. The bread and butter of a version control system. Ron are you far enough along in playing with arch that you are ready for that piece of the conversation?
nope. Have not had time to look as I have been sick. Fooey.
The only issue I worry about is making sure that vendors have One Place To Go for as they do know (i.e. sourceforge.net). It seems to me that openbios.org could be that place. Sound ok?
Generally. And certainly it should be the tree we work against. However one of very nice things about arch is that any with a file sever can trivially setup a mirror.
But I do agree we do a blessed repository that holds the mainline development.
Eric
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:12:33AM -0700, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Jamie Rollins wrote:
I agree very strongly on this point. If linuxbios is going to move forward, it's public face needs to be very well presented, which at the moment, it is not. The linuxbios.org web site is very out of date. The page desperately needs a documentation section, and a better way to download the most recent source code other than through the CVS.
volunteers?
I've really got a day job that eats most of my waking hours.
What is the official status regarding LANL support for LinuxBIOS? Does LANL support LinuxBIOS development through your, Ollie's and Greg's salaries, along with the other guys there that have contributed?
I used to have more time for the web site but my free time is almost zero.
I understand what that is like. :(
Regarding what is needed, my personal impression is that there are a couple of quite varying areas of LinuxBIOS that would benefit from documentation.
1. Overview Describes what LinuxBIOS is, what it is not and what it would like to become. Historical information and development status goes here too.
2. Development
2.1. Basics and terms List of/links to external documentation which is relevant for working with various parts of LinuxBIOS. E.g. PCI spec.. And terms used frequently that have particular meaning, e.g. device.
2.2. High-level overview Shows the general flow for chip sources and how they work together in the complete mainboard source. This includes a look at the source tree directory structure.
2.3. Porting guide What you need to know to make LinuxBIOS run on a previously unknown mainboard. This includes documentation of the configuration file formats and a general list of things required for a new port. (Chip documentation for new chips, flash enable documentation for new boards with previously known chips, etcetera.)
3. Utilities romcc, flash_and_burn, getpir and all their friends. What are they all used for, why are they needed?
There are probably more sections that would be useful too.
I find myself being able to contribute to the overview and maybe some points about utilities, since I haven't actually used LinuxBIOS yet. Anything about development is of course also tightly tied to the source, which has been somewhat in flux lately (for the better, since the new design is excellent!) rendering most existing docs obsolete..
..just some thoughts.. Feel free to add more!
//Peter
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Peter Stuge wrote:
There are probably more sections that would be useful too.
Technical jargon? I'm still a bit confused about what payload is and there's probably quite a few words/acronyms that are being used but it's hard to know exactly what they mean.
Best regards
Peter K
On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 10:36:35AM +0100, Peter Karlsson wrote:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Peter Stuge wrote:
There are probably more sections that would be useful too.
Technical jargon? I'm still a bit confused about what payload is and there's probably quite a few words/acronyms that are being used but it's hard to know exactly what they mean.
Right. These all go to "2.1. Basics and terms"..
I wrote a short summary which discusses payloads a little, perhaps it can help clear things out; http://www.clustermatic.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2005-January/010815.html
I'm going to add that to the wiki in a minute.
//Peter
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Peter Karlsson wrote:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Peter Stuge wrote:
There are probably more sections that would be useful too.
Technical jargon? I'm still a bit confused about what payload is and there's probably quite a few words/acronyms that are being used but it's hard to know exactly what they mean.
Best regards
wiki contributors, here is a question; go for it! ron
Hi,
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
[new website]
volunteers?
Well, I would volunteer to a) create the new webpage and b) set it up with some kind of CMS so that someone else can fill it with content.
I've got about 2 more weeks of holidays and am in dire need to practice a bit more of typo3 development to "hone my skills". So, why not do something worthwhile instead of a bunch more "lorem ipsum" pages? ;)
Only problem: I have been trying to get linuxbios running on one of our epia boards and failed horribly. Therefore someone else would have to deliver the _real_ content as I am quite clueless wrt to linuxbios and not really paying attention to the list.
bye, andreas
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Andreas Thienemann wrote:
[new website]
volunteers?
Well, I would volunteer to a) create the new webpage and b) set it up with some kind of CMS so that someone else can fill it with content.
OK, guys, we've got a new web site for linuxbios, courtesy Stefan.
Check it out: wiki.linuxbios.org
Only problem: I have been trying to get linuxbios running on one of our epia boards and failed horribly.
that's because somebody appears to have busted linuxbios/epia recently :-(
ron
Hi Ron, Andreas,
Andreas, which version of LB where you looking at ? People still seem to be getting on ok with V1 and the HOW-TO I wrote some time ago. Which version of the EPIA are you using, is it the original EPIA or one of the other version (ie EPIA-M, EPIA-MII etc) ? If it's the EPIA, I may be able to help.
Quoting "Ronald G. Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, Andreas Thienemann wrote:
[new website]
volunteers?
Well, I would volunteer to a) create the new webpage and b) set it up with some kind of CMS so that someone else can fill it with content.
OK, guys, we've got a new web site for linuxbios, courtesy Stefan.
Check it out: wiki.linuxbios.org
Only problem: I have been trying to get linuxbios running on one of our epia boards and failed horribly.
that's because somebody appears to have busted linuxbios/epia recently :-(
Ron,
Do you mean the EPIA, or the EPIA-M ? I didn't think anyone had updated the EPIA-M after the recent code changes. If it's the EPIA, I can't see what's broken against my checked out version, and nobody seems to be making any changes to the epia code that I can see.
ron _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Regards Mark Wilkinson.
Hi Mark,
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 mark.wilkinson@2pmtech.com wrote:
Andreas, which version of LB where you looking at ? People still seem to be getting on ok with V1 and the HOW-TO I wrote some time ago.
I tried the Linuxbios 1 version together with the howto.
Which version of the EPIA are you using, is it the original EPIA or one of the other version (ie EPIA-M, EPIA-MII etc) ? If it's the EPIA, I may be able to help.
I tried the epia-pd. According to the specs, the hardware itself is not that different from the M version. Seems not to be the case however.
bye, andreas
Hi Andreas
Quoting Andreas Thienemann andreas@bawue.net:
Hi Mark,
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 mark.wilkinson@2pmtech.com wrote:
Andreas, which version of LB where you looking at ? People still seem to be getting on ok with V1 and the HOW-TO I wrote some time ago.
I tried the Linuxbios 1 version together with the howto.
Which version of the EPIA are you using, is it the original EPIA or one of the other version (ie EPIA-M, EPIA-MII etc) ? If it's the EPIA, I may be able to help.
I tried the epia-pd.
This could be the start of the problem, from what I remember, the versions of the EPIA after the initial one where each different enough to cause problems, such as a different north/south bridge requiring different configurations to get the ram, serial, etc up and running.
The inital EPIA has a via VT8601 northbridge and a VT8231 southbridge.
Looking at VIA's website, everything after the EPIA, upto but not including the new EPIA-SP have a CLE266 northbridge and a VT8235 southbridge. This would mean that the code for the EPIA-M in LinuxBIOS should work for these motherboards.
The EPIA-SP is listed as having a CN400 northbridge and a VT8237 Southbrigde.
Unfortunately, I think the EPIA-M code is not working at the present, I don't think it got updated after the major code changes a little while ago (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong)
getting that code to compile would be your first step.
According to the specs, the hardware itself is not that different from the M version. Seems not to be the case however.
bye, andreas
Regards Mark Wilkinson.
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 mark.wilkinson@2pmtech.com wrote:
Andreas, which version of LB where you looking at ? People still seem to be getting on ok with V1 and the HOW-TO I wrote some time ago. Which version of the EPIA are you using, is it the original EPIA or one of the other version (ie EPIA-M, EPIA-MII etc) ? If it's the EPIA, I may be able to help.
V2 epia. V2 epia used to work, but does not currently. It locks up in ram init.
My worry is that the code was fixed to use DRAM timings from SPD and the infamous 8601 bugs have now caught up with us.
ron
-
Andreas Thienemann -
David Hillman -
ebiederman＠lnxi.com -
Jamie Rollins -
Josh England -
Li-Ta Lo -
mark.wilkinson＠2pmtech.com -
Peter Karlsson -
Peter Stuge -
Ronald G. Minnich -
Stefan Reinauer -
yhlu