In the past, F12 was the default SeaBIOS boot menu key. This was typically seen with a boot message of:
Press F12 for boot menu.
Do to several issues with the F12 key on both real and emulated machines, the development branch of the SeaBIOS repository has now changed the default key to the ESC key. This means the prompt in the future will show as:
Press ESC for boot menu.
If the old key is desired, one can still activate it by placing 0x86 in the CBFS file "/etc/boot-menu-key" (cbfstool build/coreboot.rom add-int -i 0x86 -n etc/boot-menu-key) along with the old boot message in "/etc/boot-menu-message". The wiki documentation has futher details.
-Kevin
Kevin O'Connor wrote:
If the old key is desired, one can still activate it by placing 0x86 in the CBFS file "/etc/boot-menu-key" (cbfstool build/coreboot.rom add-int -i 0x86 -n etc/boot-menu-key)
Neat!
along with the old boot message in "/etc/boot-menu-message".
I can see this being a source of usability issues. Is there any way to reasonably generate the message from the scan code?
Thanks
//Peter
On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 05:38:19PM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
Kevin O'Connor wrote:
If the old key is desired, one can still activate it by placing 0x86 in the CBFS file "/etc/boot-menu-key" (cbfstool build/coreboot.rom add-int -i 0x86 -n etc/boot-menu-key)
Neat!
along with the old boot message in "/etc/boot-menu-message".
I can see this being a source of usability issues. Is there any way to reasonably generate the message from the scan code?
It's a pain to attempt to auto-generate the message. If someone is updating flash with a CBFS file for the key, I don't think it is too hard to also update CBFS with the desired message. Also, if one uses a bootsplash image, then boot-menu-message isn't seen anyway (in that case the boot key message needs to be encoded into the bootsplash graphics if it is desired).
FYI, the boot-menu-key / boot-menu-message files aren't new. They were used in the past to change to ESC on several machines. The only recent change is using ESC as the default.
-Kevin
Kevin O'Connor wrote:
I can see this being a source of usability issues. Is there any way to reasonably generate the message from the scan code?
It's a pain to attempt to auto-generate the message.
Could an incorrect message at least be avoided?
How about crowdsourcing scan code translations? Include ESC, F12 and a few others, print the scan code itself into the message for all unknown scan codes in boot-menu-key, and accept patches (or not!) for more scan codes.
I don't think it is too hard to also update CBFS with the desired message.
It's not. I don't think it is too hard for SeaBIOS to at least not output an incorrect instruction.
FYI, the boot-menu-key / boot-menu-message files aren't new. They were used in the past to change to ESC on several machines. The only recent change is using ESC as the default.
Ack.
Thanks
//Peter
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Kevin O'Connor -
Peter Stuge