[coreboot] Burn 2MB coreboot.rom on 8MB flash chip

[Jose Trujillo]

Zvika:

There are 2 ways to build coreboot: (choose one)....
1.- Including IFD, TXE, GBE etc.... inside coreboot CBFS.
2.- Using the original firmware(FW) with IFD, TXE, GBE already in flash and just rewrite coreboot on top of the BIOS block.

Your original computer Firmware = Intel FW + "BIOS"

Intel FW = IFD +PD+ME/TXE+GBE
BIOS=AMI-Phoenix etc...

IFD=Intel Firmware Descriptor Table.
PD=Parameters
ME=Management Engine (For "Core" kind of processors).
TXE=Trusted Execution Engine (For "Atom" kind of processors).
GBE=Network card firmware.

Zvika said:
"After creating coreboot.rom should I always use the original BIOS with ifdtool to convert rom to bin ?"
Answer:
No, there are other methods and tools that can do the merge.... (ifdtool and Intel's FIT are working fine for me)

After the creation of the coreboot build you have 2 ways of doing the flashing for your case: (with fpt).
1.- Flash the full 8MB (Intel FW+coreboot) if the SPI flash is blank or have unknown firmware.
     Use IFDTool in this case to inject coreboot to Intel FW..... then flash it with fpt .
2.- Flash only the BIOS block (5MB your specific case) in this case ask someone else how to do it with fpt....

I hope this answered your questions.
Jose..

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Saturday, September 29, 2018 12:24 AM, Zvi Vered <veredz72 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jose,
>
> You wrote:
> "My recommended approach is using the original Intel FW with already included the FD, TXE".
>
> What is "original intel FW" ?
> What is FD, TXE ?
>
> After creating coreboot.rom should I always use the original BIOS with ifdtool to convert rom to bin ?
>
> Thank you,
> Zvika
>
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 7:27 PM Jose Trujillo <ce.autom at protonmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You are right Nico,
>>
>> I just forgot the troubles this caused me.
>> I am sorry Vika... My mistake.
>>
>> I can confirm with Nico:
>> ROM chip size = 8MB (your case)
>> CBFS_SIZE = 2 to 5MB (your specific case)
>>
>> My recommended approach is using the original Intel FW with already included the FD, TXE.
>>
>> I never tested adding regions to coreboot but you can try.
>>
>> To have better chances of success you should be dumping hardware settings booting with your original "BIOS" (look for the attached file).
>>
>> Check if the system is "Memory down"or/and ECC because it will be needed to edit FSP (if using it).
>> Dump memory settings with the following commands:
>>
>> sudo dnf install i2c-tools-perl
>> sudo modprobe eeprom
>> decode-dimms
>>
>> If you have not done this already there is still a long way to go.
>> Don't get intimidated, just do it, if you have questions just ask.... I will try to help
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Jose.
>>
>> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
>> On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 6:28 PM, Nico Huber <nico.h at gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On 9/26/18 9:19 AM, Jose Trujillo via coreboot wrote:
>>>
>>> > No, don't change it, you change the size of coreboot only if during the
>>> > building process "make" complain that there is not enough space but in
>>> > your case your build was already successful leave it like that.
>>>
>>> this advice seems very weird to me. I'm not experienced with Bay Trail.
>>> But unless there is a bug in the Bay Trail code, you should always set
>>> the correct ROM_SIZE (to the full flash chip size). Otherwise you may
>>> introduce bugs in code that relies on this setting (e.g. saving the
>>> MRC cache might fail and so would S3 resume).
>>>
>>> CBFS_SIZE however is the setting to adjust according to your needs. It
>>> should be at most the size of the BIOS region.
>>>
>>> > In the rare circumstance that more space is required you can increase
>>> > coreboot size to 4MB and istill will fit into your system 5MB of space
>>> > available.
>>> > "ifdtool" will inject coreboot in the top of the BYT_orig.bin and save
>>> > as BYT_orig.bin.new that you can flash to your system.
>>>
>>> I assume this doesn't work oob if you set ROM_SIZE correctly. But it is
>>> unnecessary to craft a single file by hand. You can either only flash
>>> the BIOS region (recommended) or add the other regions in coreboot's
>>> config (HAVE_{IFD,ME,GBE}_BIN).
>>>
>>> Nico
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/attachments/20181001/c6b09217/attachment.html>