[flashrom] GSOC 2011

Stefan Tauner stefan.tauner at student.tuwien.ac.at
Sat Mar 19 18:00:22 CET 2011


hello

since no one on irc even replied with "go away intel nazi!!11", i have
to propose my idea here ;)

i tried to get flashrom to work on my two main computers[1], but they
don't work because of the EC/Intel's management engine (ME).
i don't know for sure how the vendor tools do the flashing, but i
presume that they talk to the ME via HECI to coordinate the process.
There _was_ an attempt to get basic HECI and QST (intel quiet system
technology) into the kernel to allow temperature readings etc. Intel
abandoned it in 2009 [2].
my (project) idea is to try to reverse engineer some vendor tools to
see how they work and try to reproduce it in flashrom to eventually
support ME enabled motherboards in flashrom. i dunno how big the impact
would be, but i guess this would allow even many laptops to be
supported?
what do you think about this idea and its feasibility? any volunteers
for mentoring? :)

1: http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/2798/
2:
http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/pipermail/devel/2009-September/002458.html

also i have some questions about the "official" ideas:
UI:
 - With TUI do you mean (something like) ncurses?
 - the "current" code is [3]? i have not looked into it yet.
   - has it to use qt and/or that code (i like java *hide* and have a
     bit of gdk experience)?

recovery stuff:
guess it would be mandatory to have a working coreboot setup with real
hardware for that?

bitbanging support: this would also require available hardware. would i
have to buy that myself? can it be borrowed from someone?
these projects would probably profit from my open workbench logic
analyzer...

the infrastructure things sound a bit boring, but from what i saw in
the source some refactoring would (also) improve the codebase
somewhat. ;) so the infrastructure-related projects may be even the most
valuable contribution for longterm goals. ok that was not really a
question, sorry.

if there are other ideas i would love to hear them (soon).

thanks!

3: http://gitorious.org/flashrom/flashrom-gui/commits/master

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner




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