First posted this question to coreboot mailing list, but on second thought, I think this is the right place.
I have experimentet with coreboot on my CompuLab Intense PC (Ivy Bridge) for some time, and I think everything is working now, with Intel ME disabled. Although, I have some troubles with boot selection.
I'm currently running coreboot [4cea00a64] with default SeaBIOS payload [v1.13.0] and a bootorder file. The boot device search order is this:
1. USB 2.0 device 2. USB 3.0 device 3. SATA devices (in order: 2.5″ internal, mSATA, eSATA, FACE module)
During testing I have been running the system from a USB 3.0 flash disk. This worked as expected and system would automatically select this device during boot/reboot.
I then wanted to use the internal 2.5" SATA disk, so I installed an OS and confirmed it working by manually selecting the SATA disk in boot menu. I then removed boot sector from flash disk, reboot and expected that the system would now automatically boot from internal SATA disk, but this happened instead:
=== Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
Booting from Floppy... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
No bootable device. Retrying in 60 seconds. ===
Not sure what is going on with "Floppy". No such thing exists on the system. If I remove flash disk from USB port before power on, the system will boot correctly from internal SATA disk. Is this correct behaviour?
I would expect that it should not matter that flash disk is inserted in USB port, as long as no boot sector is present on the device. If this is NOT correct behaviour, then what could be the problem here?
Thanks in advance.
Regards, Mogens Jensen
On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 03:39:58PM +0000, Mogens Jensen wrote:
First posted this question to coreboot mailing list, but on second thought, I think this is the right place.
I have experimentet with coreboot on my CompuLab Intense PC (Ivy Bridge) for some time, and I think everything is working now, with Intel ME disabled. Although, I have some troubles with boot selection.
I'm currently running coreboot [4cea00a64] with default SeaBIOS payload [v1.13.0] and a bootorder file. The boot device search order is this:
- USB 2.0 device
- USB 3.0 device
- SATA devices (in order: 2.5″ internal, mSATA, eSATA, FACE module)
During testing I have been running the system from a USB 3.0 flash disk. This worked as expected and system would automatically select this device during boot/reboot.
I then wanted to use the internal 2.5" SATA disk, so I installed an OS and confirmed it working by manually selecting the SATA disk in boot menu. I then removed boot sector from flash disk, reboot and expected that the system would now automatically boot from internal SATA disk, but this happened instead:
=== Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
Booting from Floppy... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
No bootable device. Retrying in 60 seconds.
Not sure what is going on with "Floppy". No such thing exists on the system. If I remove flash disk from USB port before power on, the system will boot correctly from internal SATA disk. Is this correct behaviour?
I would expect that it should not matter that flash disk is inserted in USB port, as long as no boot sector is present on the device. If this is NOT correct behaviour, then what could be the problem here?
Although that expectation is reasonable, it's not how a traditional BIOS works. One can select which hard drive is the "bootable" drive during the "boot menu" phase. That drive effectively becomes the "C:" drive and it can be booted from. However, if that drive is not bootable then no hard drive can be booted (as in practice it's only possible to boot from the "C:" drive on a BIOS).
So, in short, use the boot menu to select the alternate drive (or the bootorder cbfs file). Don't expect an automatic search of bootable harddrives.
-Kevin
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Friday, May 15, 2020 2:17 AM, Kevin O'Connor kevin@koconnor.net wrote:
On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 03:39:58PM +0000, Mogens Jensen wrote:
First posted this question to coreboot mailing list, but on second thought, I think this is the right place. I have experimentet with coreboot on my CompuLab Intense PC (Ivy Bridge) for some time, and I think everything is working now, with Intel ME disabled. Although, I have some troubles with boot selection. I'm currently running coreboot [4cea00a64] with default SeaBIOS payload [v1.13.0] and a bootorder file. The boot device search order is this:
- USB 2.0 device
- USB 3.0 device
- SATA devices (in order: 2.5″ internal, mSATA, eSATA, FACE module)
During testing I have been running the system from a USB 3.0 flash disk. This worked as expected and system would automatically select this device during boot/reboot. I then wanted to use the internal 2.5" SATA disk, so I installed an OS and confirmed it working by manually selecting the SATA disk in boot menu. I then removed boot sector from flash disk, reboot and expected that the system would now automatically boot from internal SATA disk, but this happened instead: === Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk Booting from Floppy... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
No bootable device. Retrying in 60 seconds.
============================================
Not sure what is going on with "Floppy". No such thing exists on the system. If I remove flash disk from USB port before power on, the system will boot correctly from internal SATA disk. Is this correct behaviour? I would expect that it should not matter that flash disk is inserted in USB port, as long as no boot sector is present on the device. If this is NOT correct behaviour, then what could be the problem here?
Although that expectation is reasonable, it's not how a traditional BIOS works. One can select which hard drive is the "bootable" drive during the "boot menu" phase. That drive effectively becomes the "C:" drive and it can be booted from. However, if that drive is not bootable then no hard drive can be booted (as in practice it's only possible to boot from the "C:" drive on a BIOS).
So, in short, use the boot menu to select the alternate drive (or the bootorder cbfs file). Don't expect an automatic search of bootable harddrives.
-Kevin
I did a test with QEMU emulator version 4.2.0, which is using SeaBIOS. Hard disk is configured as first boot device, but has no boot sector:
=== Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
Booting from Floppy... Boot failed: could not read the boot disk
Booting from DVD/CD... ===
QEMU will then correctly boot the CD ISO image. This is EXACTLY the behaviour I'm looking for.
Can I configure coreboot/SeaBIOS so booting works in the same way on my system?
Thanks.
Regards, Mogens Jensen
On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 05:19:23PM +0000, Mogens Jensen wrote:
On Friday, May 15, 2020 2:17 AM, Kevin O'Connor kevin@koconnor.net wrote:
On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 03:39:58PM +0000, Mogens Jensen wrote:
I would expect that it should not matter that flash disk is inserted in USB port, as long as no boot sector is present on the device. If this is NOT correct behaviour, then what could be the problem here?
Although that expectation is reasonable, it's not how a traditional BIOS works. One can select which hard drive is the "bootable" drive during the "boot menu" phase. That drive effectively becomes the "C:" drive and it can be booted from. However, if that drive is not bootable then no hard drive can be booted (as in practice it's only possible to boot from the "C:" drive on a BIOS).
So, in short, use the boot menu to select the alternate drive (or the bootorder cbfs file). Don't expect an automatic search of bootable harddrives.
I did a test with QEMU emulator version 4.2.0, which is using SeaBIOS. Hard disk is configured as first boot device, but has no boot sector:
=== Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk
Booting from Floppy... Boot failed: could not read the boot disk
Booting from DVD/CD...
QEMU will then correctly boot the CD ISO image. This is EXACTLY the behaviour I'm looking for.
Can I configure coreboot/SeaBIOS so booting works in the same way on my system?
Certainly. SeaBIOS supports booting from floppy or cdrom on a failure to boot from a harddrive (as do traditional bios). Your original query was on booting from a different harddrive, and that isn't something that a traditional bios (nor SeaBIOS) supports.
-Kevin
-
Kevin O'Connor -
Mogens Jensen