On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:53 PM, David Hendricks dhendrix@google.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 8:47 AM, Fred . eldmannen@gmail.com wrote:
The ability for SeaBIOS to launch a "setup program" is already present
- it just requires the creation of this setup program. Several
coreboot payloads already have some menu drawing code, so this shouldn't be too difficult. Frankly though, there isn't much to configure (and that is a good thing).
- Competition have password protection. SeaBIOS does not.
Again - this is part of the "setup program" - there is nothing in SeaBIOS to protect.
The BIOS of the competition have two types of passwords. One to boot the system and one to access the setup screen. Password for bootup has nothing todo with the "setup program". Since there is currently no such setup program, the initial implementation for a bootup password could use a password configured at compile-time.
I think it's useful to step back and look at it in a different light. The "competition" follows a very different usage model than coreboot and SeaBIOS; Many commercial BIOS products are essentially OSes in themselves, which has historically been considered a bad thing in the coreboot community and by extension the SeaBIOS community.
Much of the competition and also SeaBIOS is modular. So you can enable/disable features and modules to make it heavier/lighter depending on needs through configuration at compile-time.
From that perspective, it doesn't make much sense for SeaBIOS to have a boot password when every modern OS has a robust authentication mechanism already.
(you have some good ideas, but keep in mind many people simply want SeaBIOS to do its job and get out of the way)
A BIOS password would add an additional line of defense and protect against booting from a removable device such as CD or USB. An OS password would not protect against booting from removable media. Adding password support would probably be pretty trivial.
- SeaBIOS supports 32-bit PCI. It should support 64-bit PCI.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
I've read that SeaBIOS supports 32-bit PCI. http://www.seabios.org/Releases#SeaBIOS_0.5.1 PCI also have 64-bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI#64-bit_PCI
64-bit PCI is actually obsolete. It was used for a period in server platforms, but has been supplanted by PCI Express.
David Hendricks (dhendrix) Systems Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Indeed. But 32-bit PCI is also obsolete, yet it is implemented in SeaBIOS. So 64-bit PCI should be added to a not-yet-implemented list or a low-priority list and then if anyone wants to work on it, they may do so. Since we already have support for 32-bit PCI, then it would be great if 64-bit PCI support could be added if it perhaps only require a slight modification to the existing code.
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Fred .