First time using coreboot+edk2, I didn't get to see the beginning.

[Keith Hui]

tldr: After my latest reflash of coreboot with edk2 payload, serial
log didn't start flowing right away and no on screen activity until OS
on drive has begun booting. What gives?

After hacking on coreboot with SeaBIOS for so long, I finally tried
edk2. It wasn't the smoothest transition.

My testing hard drive has a bit of special hackery done[1] in hope it
will boot under both legacy and UEFI schemes. I did add SeaBIOS as
secondary payload, and it couldn't boot. Then I pulled out the main
drive out of my laptop which is all UEFI, and it booted fine after
probably 30 seconds of nothing - the first thing I saw on screen is
the Fedora spinner. Nothing from edk2 or grub on the drive.

There also was a bit of delay on my connected serial console, then
when info finally started flowing, it's already well into ramstage.
And when I checked cbmem, it unfortunately overflowed so I lost logs
of raminit, which would be most important given my patch train now
under review. It would take a warm reboot before I start getting the
head of the boot logs.

I didn't set a boot logo.

What more set up I have to do to get my edk2 and grub boot menu back?

I've attached logs from minicom, cbmem, and my Kconfig, if it helps.

Thanks for any insights.
Keith

[1] If I remember correctly, it is GPT partitioned with ESP plus a
BIOS boot partition where grub can hide itself.

[Nico Huber]

Hi Keith,

On 14.09.23 06:30, Keith Hui wrote:
> What more set up I have to do to get my edk2 and grub boot menu back?
>
> I've attached logs from minicom, cbmem, and my Kconfig, if it helps.

this seems to be the culprit:

CONFIG_VGA_TEXT_FRAMEBUFFER=y

EDK2 requires a linear framebuffer. You can find this in the Display
submenu of the Devices menu.

Nico

[Matt DeVillier]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 11:28 PM Keith Hui  wrote:
> tldr: After my latest reflash of coreboot with edk2 payload, serial
> log didn't start flowing right away and no on screen activity until OS
> on drive has begun booting. What gives?
>
> After hacking on coreboot with SeaBIOS for so long, I finally tried
> edk2. It wasn't the smoothest transition.
>
> My testing hard drive has a bit of special hackery done[1] in hope it
> will boot under both legacy and UEFI schemes. I did add SeaBIOS as
> secondary payload, and it couldn't boot. Then I pulled out the main
> drive out of my laptop which is all UEFI, and it booted fine after
> probably 30 seconds of nothing - the first thing I saw on screen is
> the Fedora spinner. Nothing from edk2 or grub on the drive.

edk2 doesn't support secondary payloads
> There also was a bit of delay on my connected serial console, then
> when info finally started flowing, it's already well into ramstage.
> And when I checked cbmem, it unfortunately overflowed so I lost logs
> of raminit, which would be most important given my patch train now
> under review. It would take a warm reboot before I start getting the
> head of the boot logs.
>
> I didn't set a boot logo.
>
> What more set up I have to do to get my edk2 and grub boot menu back?
>
> I've attached logs from minicom, cbmem, and my Kconfig, if it helps.

as Nico said, you need to use a linear framebuffer, not vga text. The
display resolution should be native.

also, edk2 cbmem logging may or may not work, and may or may not slow down
boot time.
> Thanks for any insights.
> Keith
>
> [1] If I remember correctly, it is GPT partitioned with ESP plus a
> BIOS boot partition where grub can hide itself.
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> coreboot mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

[Keith Hui]

On Thu., Sep. 14, 2023, 09:18 Matt DeVillier, 
wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 11:28 PM Keith Hui  wrote:
> > I did add SeaBIOS as
> > secondary payload, and it couldn't boot. Then I pulled out the main
> > drive out of my laptop which is all UEFI, and it booted fine after
> > probably 30 seconds of nothing - the first thing I saw on screen is
> > the Fedora spinner. Nothing from edk2 or grub on the drive.
>
> edk2 doesn't support secondary payloads

Then how should edk2 + CSM (seabios?) + (i)PXE be set up so it can boot
from anything?
> > There also was a bit of delay on my connected serial console, then
> > when info finally started flowing, it's already well into ramstage.
> > And when I checked cbmem, it unfortunately overflowed so I lost logs
> > of raminit, which would be most important given my patch train now
> > under review. It would take a warm reboot before I start getting the
> > head of the boot logs.
> >
> > I didn't set a boot logo.
> >
> > What more set up I have to do to get my edk2 and grub boot menu back?
> >
> > I've attached logs from minicom, cbmem, and my Kconfig, if it helps.
>
> as Nico said, you need to use a linear framebuffer, not vga text. The
> display resolution should be native.
>
> also, edk2 cbmem logging may or may not work, and may or may not slow down
> boot time.

I'll report back when I return from a trip in a week.

edk2 cbmem logging probably works. I remember seeing some EFI things in
there.

Thanks
Keith

[|H|]

Hi Kevin,

You mentioned you've been hacking with SeaBIOS for a while. You may have already seen building as a CSM mentioned here: https://seabios.org/Build_overview

This seems to suggest the process as building SeaBIOS as a CSM module and then building EDKII. I think I tried to do this once and EDKII ended up being too big to fit in the CBFS I had.

There was also a talk on getting SeaBIOS working as a CSM on hardware at OSFC one year:
https://cfp.osfc.io/osfc2020/talk/YWWRVG/

I'd be interested to see how to solve this, and I'm sorry I can't be of much help.

-------- Original Message --------
On 14 Sept 2023, 14:37, Keith Hui wrote:
> On Thu., Sep. 14, 2023, 09:18 Matt DeVillier,  wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 11:28 PM Keith Hui  wrote:
> > > I did add SeaBIOS as
> > > secondary payload, and it couldn't boot. Then I pulled out the main
> > > drive out of my laptop which is all UEFI, and it booted fine after
> > > probably 30 seconds of nothing - the first thing I saw on screen is
> > > the Fedora spinner. Nothing from edk2 or grub on the drive.
> >
> > edk2 doesn't support secondary payloads
>
> Then how should edk2 + CSM (seabios?) + (i)PXE be set up so it can boot from anything?
> > > There also was a bit of delay on my connected serial console, then
> > > when info finally started flowing, it's already well into ramstage.
> > > And when I checked cbmem, it unfortunately overflowed so I lost logs
> > > of raminit, which would be most important given my patch train now
> > > under review. It would take a warm reboot before I start getting the
> > > head of the boot logs.
> > >
> > > I didn't set a boot logo.
> > >
> > > What more set up I have to do to get my edk2 and grub boot menu back?
> > >
> > > I've attached logs from minicom, cbmem, and my Kconfig, if it helps.
> >
> > as Nico said, you need to use a linear framebuffer, not vga text. The display resolution should be native.
> >
> > also, edk2 cbmem logging may or may not work, and may or may not slow down boot time.
>
> I'll report back when I return from a trip in a week.
>
> edk2 cbmem logging probably works. I remember seeing some EFI things in there.
>
> Thanks
> Keith