[LinuxBIOS] Specifications

ron minnich rminnich at gmail.com
Fri Jun 15 07:08:37 CEST 2007


This should all be so simple.

The original idea was that LB would turn on dram, call OS, done. OS
would do all config space.

Then, turned out linux can't configure unconfigured PCI BARs. And, we
needed to do some PCI config for SPD.

So, LB starts doing ALL PCI config -- no way out.

Then, turns out some devices put things in IO space that affect PCI
config space. YUCK! But we have to start doing things in IO space for
PCI config space.

Then, turns out that many IRQ tables are wrong. So, we start setting IRQs.

And so on and so on ....

Really, I think LB should only do those things the OS can not possibly
do. The "OS can't do" is a boundary we hoped would be very solid and
immovable. The problem is, buggy hardware, and buggy kernels, make
that boundary very, very hard to find. And, both hardware and kernels
keep changing --> the boundary is flexible. In 1999 I thought there
would be simple, hard rules; I was quite wrong.

Every new piece of hardware seems to push the boundary around in some
way. It is difficult sometimes to know what to do. But, in the end, LB
should really try to do almost nothing, and let its payload(s) do
almost everything.

ron




More information about the coreboot mailing list