[LinuxBIOS] [RFC] Call for Action: LinuxBIOS foundations

[Darmawan Salihun]

On 8/31/07, todthgie <todthgie at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Corey Osgood" <corey.osgood at gmail.com>
> To: "Darmawan Salihun" <darmawan.salihun at gmail.com>
> Cc: "linuxbios" <linuxbios at linuxbios.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 00:07
> Subject: Re: [LinuxBIOS] [RFC] Call for Action: LinuxBIOS foundations
>
>
> > Darmawan Salihun wrote:
> >> On 8/29/07, *Uwe Hermann* <uwe at hermann-uwe.de
> >> <mailto:uwe at hermann-uwe.de>> wrote:
> >>
> >>     The real problems (in my view) are:
> >>
> >>     1. Lack of developers
> >>     2. Lack of time
> >>     3. Lack of proper datasheets (for some/many chipsets)
> >>
> >>     Issue 2 cannot be solved easily, issue 3 depends on many factors
> >>     we usually cannot influence a lot, but issue 1 is where we can
> >>     get the biggest gain, IMHO.
> >>
> >>
> >> I wonder if clean-room reverse engineering on commercial BIOS that
> comes
> >> with the board can help for case 3 because most of them have a
> "generic"
> >> code to boot the machine until preliminary RAM test. Personally, I
> >> view it
> >> as a *very interesting* challenge.
> >
> > Very interesting, yes, but that routes directly back to problem 1. More
> > developers could lead the creation of a separate project with that goal
> > in mind, but for now everyone's working with what they have. If we had
> > more people/time, such things might be feasible and very beneficial.
>
> suggestion: make a tool based that emits a trace of whats going on ...
> i would suggest first making a tool for extracting award flash enables....
>
> -Todthgie


I think it's not too hard. I would need to create an IDA Pro plugin or
IDA Python script that can search for the binary signatures that of
interest.
I have some preliminary code for different task that I think can be used
for
that once I'm working on it ;-). It may be just too premature to talk about
it
right now.


Regards,

Darmawan Salihun
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