[coreboot] Coreboot on X230 and Dualboot: works = Qubes 3.2 + Win 10 Enterprise

One7two99 one7two99 at protonmail.com
Sat Sep 23 22:32:09 CEST 2017


Hello Peter,

-------- Original Message --------

> Subject: Re: [coreboot] Coreboot on X230 and Dualboot / How to make it work
> Local Time: September 23, 2017 10:01 PM
>
>>> VGA init can be proper without Windows being able to boot.

I know, this was the setup I had before, but having a PC which is unable to run windows is sometimes a no-go :-)

> Windows will require SeaBIOS. (In theory perhaps TianoCore+CorebootPkg
> works too, but I wouldn"t bet on that.)
> Windows will also require the VGA BIOS.

I am currently only using SeaBIOS and the vga.rom and SUCCESS, I am able to boot into my Qubes 3.2 installation AND (!) my Windows 10 Enteprise, whis is great as this was broken after switching to Coreboot.

> If you have SeaBIOS then I recommend letting SeaBIOS run the VGA BIOS.

I don't really understand what this means, when I document my setup/coreboot configuration, I am happy for any suggestion how to improve it.

>> 1) Devices > Add a Video Bios Table (VBT) binary to CBFS (yes or no?)
> No - the VGA BIOS creates a VBT. Is that not documented sufficiently?

Maybe I don't get it, but in menuconfig I have disabled this option.

>> 2) Devices > Graphic initialization (currently: use native graphics init)
>> (should I switch this to: Run VGA Option Roms?)
> No - disable graphics init in coreboot and let SeaBIOS run your VGA BIOS.

Ok, I'll try that and will disable graphic initalization in coreboot.
As mentioned with the current setting I can boot into Linux and Windows 10.
Is there any benefit disabling native graphics init in coreboot?

> As you can find in SeaBIOS docs, that requires the VGA BIOS to be
> stored with the correct name in CBFS, which coreboot may or may not
> do automatically. (It should, but bugs.)
> If you store the VGA BIOS with a name in CBFS containing a special
> subdirectory (I think vgaroms/) then the rest of the filename doesn"t
> matter.

I think some documentation here would be great, as I am currently a bit lost.
What I got from your reply, it is possible that coreboot will use the  vga.rom but it can also be handled by SeaBIOS, do I need to modify any additional things there (in SeaBIOS)?

> You can of course always add the VGA BIOS file to CBFS manually, if you
> want it to have a particular name in CBFS. It is not neccessary that the
> coreboot build system adds it.

I need to do some more reading about CBFS ... currently I am just happy that I got coreboot working for dualbooting Qubes and Win 10.

I'll do some more testing to see if everything works (external display / standby/resume / LTE/etc)

What has been improved already:
Booting up Qubes OS doesn't can also be done with graphical but, before including vga.rom into coreboot I had to edit grub.
In order to enter my passphrase to unlock my LUKS encrypted drive in Qubes I had to change grub to boot in "console mode" instead of relying on graphics:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="vga_text"
Remove rhgb quiet from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX

I've rolled back these changes and now I get the graphical splash screen during boot. Nice:-)

[799]
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