[OpenBIOS] newbie

[Eric W. Biederman]

Stefan Reinauer <stepan at openbios.org> writes:

> * Douglas Frank <frank at zk3.dec.com> [050519 18:09]:
>> Man!  You mean after ALL THESE YEARS, I finally thought of something
>> useful?  ...wait, I gotta put my teeth back in... there that's better.
>> 
>> OK, I'd like some help then, a mentor maybe, to direct my studies in
>> getting up to speed.  Feel free to reply off-list: what's the best way
>> to start?  If I need to read 3.8MB of source, which are the important
>> parts?
>
> I've added a new task to the openbios issue tracking system regarding
> this thing:
> https://www.openbios.org/roundup/openbios/task12
>
> First you should get a test machine so you can flash LinuxBIOS+OpenBIOS
> and experiment with it.. 
>
> Copying away memory is pretty close to the reset vector I guess. IIRC
> LinuxBIOS unconditionally initializes the ram controller after a reset,
> because it is so fast anyways..

And reinitializing the whole system makes for a very reliable reboot.
>
> Maybe it shouldn't?

An interesting question is how much of this overlaps with kexec-on-panic.
It could be that all we need to do is get the routing right nmi/panic button
to the kernel's kexec-on-panic handler.

I meant to reply earlier but I lost track of this thread.

Eric