[OpenBIOS] OpenBIOS as an intermediate loader

Blue Swirl blauwirbel at gmail.com
Mon Nov 3 20:20:58 CET 2008


On 11/3/08, Mark Morgan Lloyd <markMLl.openbios at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:
> My apologies- this might come up as a double posting, there was a bit of
> confusion while I was setting up a permanent gateway for the list.
>
>  OK, I've got OpenBIOS built on an x86 system but it's also running other
> things at the moment so it's going to be a few hours before I can make more
> progress. In the interim I wonder if I could ask some more questions.

You could also try to run Qemu to emulate an x86 system.

>  i)    I can only boot the test system reliably from LILO (as distinct from
> GRUB) which doesn't have the equivalent of GRUB's "module" command. Is there
> a way of "piggybacking" openbios-x86.dict onto openbios.multiboot, or are
> there steps I can apply to openbios-builtin.elf to make it bootable?
>
>  ii)    Since in this role I'm not storing the dictionary in Flash
> presumably any changes imply a complete rebuild. Does this also apply to the
> setenv/printenv settings, or can they- for example- be stored in a file? I
> guess a variant of this question applies if booting from CD.

The dictionary is not used store the settings, but maybe Flash could be used.

>  iii)    While I'm enthusiastic and have a small amount of experience of
> OpenPROM on Sun systems my Forth is extremely rusty. Where can I find more
> documentation on OpenBIOS facilities (as distinct from a Forth primer of
> which there are plenty around)?

How about links on this page:
http://www.openfirmware.info/IEEE_1275-1994

OpenBIOS does not implement everything in the standard yet.

>  Many years ago there was a debugger called Quaid Analyzer which could boot
> from floppy and set traps on BIOS entry points. I'm looking forward to
> finding out how much comparable functionality I can get out of OpenBIOS.

I think ADLO (http://www.coreboot.org/ADLO) does something similar.



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