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

Jose Trujillo ce.autom at protonmail.com
Wed Oct 3 08:53:39 CEST 2018


You can do that but I have never done this way and I cannot help you with that.

Someone else can advise on this?

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Tuesday, October 2, 2018 9:39 PM, Zvi Vered <veredz72 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jose, All,
>
> Highly appreciate your answers.
> It seems the vital information in your replies are not documented.
>
> The original vendor's rom file size is 5MB.
> Do you think I can create a 5MB coreboot.rom ?
>
> It seems that AfuEfix64.efi supplied by vendor is looking for 5MB rom file like the original one. For any other file size, AfuEfix64 fails.
>
> Thank you,
> Zvika
>
> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 2:08 PM Jose Trujillo <ce.autom at protonmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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/20181003/0474cbf1/attachment.html>


More information about the coreboot mailing list