RFC IDE write

steven james pyro at linuxlabs.com
Sun Nov 10 01:52:01 CET 2002


On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:

> On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, steven james wrote:
> 
> > Is it desirable to have write capability in LinuxBIOS. Since being able
> > to write introduces new danger, should it be turned on only by setting
> > an option?
> 
> I worry a bit about write capability in that lowest-level stuff. Obviously 
> for the case of Linux in flash the write capability is there, but putting 
> it any lower should require an option.

Agreed and done!

> 
> > As for the toolkit itself, it is about ready to commit. It is a self
> > contained small directory tree with it's own makefile. Any preferences on
> > where it goes in the LinuxBIOS tree? util/baremetal?
> 
> Hmm. Does this work as a payload?

Really,it is a toolkit for producing various payloads. The first was a
simple boot chooser that presents the user with available ELF payloads in
the rom and loads the one selected.

I am also using it to produce a pforth system as a payload in rom.

It consists of a library built from LinuxBIOS componants that supplys
useful functions like printk, malloc (simple heap allocation) strcmp, ide
access elfboot and the like. It has some code grabbed from etherboot to
find the LinuxBIOS table for elfboot and memory allocation.

It uses it's own copy of the header files for now, so they could be
generalized a bit without breaking the whole tree.

Finally, an example ld script and makefile to produce an elf image ready
for flashing.

> 
> ron

G'day,
sjames


> 

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