On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek) < bijoy.k.anose@lmco.com> wrote:
Hello Myles,
According to a mailing list post ( http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bios/18159/match=s2892) you were the author of the 2892 tutorial on the coreboot website. Sorry to bother you directly, but you did say "feel free to ask for clarifications", so I'm taking you at your word. :)
No problem. If you CC the list you could get a faster response sometimes, depending on the time of day, phases of the moon, etc.
I've been looking at the tutorial, and I'm a bit confused. It's probably just my ignorance of how coreboot works, etc. As I understand it, I should be able to replace the legacy bios on my S2892-based system with a coreboot-generated ROM image. I want to be able to boot from a SATA hard drive with an existing Linux install.
So far, I've taken the latest SVN snapshots of coreboot-v2, filo, and buildrom. Hardware-wise, I have a contraption that lets me hot swap the bios chip, and a couple of spare chips. I've already successfully read an image file from the legacy BIOS and written it back and verified it a few times.
I'm pretty familiar with the Linux boot process, on top of a legacy BIOS anyway. I created an isolinux-based system that just worked out of the ramdisk and never mounted a hard disk.
I believe the steps I want to follow are roughly the following:
- build a very minimal kernel that will end up in the ROM image
Buildrom does this.
- configure and build FILO (filo.elf will include the kernel image?)
Not needed. Filo doesn't have SATA drivers. That's why you need a kernel in the ROM.
You will have to configure the shell and the boot scripts in buildrom/buildrom-devel/skeleton/ They select the defaults, mount the drives, etc.
- use buildrom to create the actual ROM image file (superset of filo.elf?)
Use buildrom, but the file only will have coreboot and the kernel with a minimal shell
- burn image to the chip using flashrom
Yes.
Is the documentation directory under coreboot-v2 the answer to all of my questions, even though it seems to be intended for an EPIA board? It seems to be the "general" part of the steps I would need, with your S2892 tutorial just calling out the additional/divergent steps specific to the S2892.
I think my tutorial was additional to another tutorial on the wiki, not the docs. The Tyan boards are very similar.
Good luck.
Myles
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Myles Watson