On 3/6/10 5:13 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: > Since there is so much interest in flashrom as a payload, I'd like to > know which variant you prefer: > 1. Full flashrom with GUI as payload (may easily exceed 200 kB > uncompressed and 60 kB lzma compressed). > 2. Tiny flashrom stub for remote flashing over serial/network/whatever > (~10 kB uncompressed and 3 kB lzma compressed, maybe even smaller). > 3. Load flashrom from an external medium (serial/USB/floppy/whatever) to > RAM and execute it (no space requirements). > Just having it as a FILO add-on would be the best solution. Then it can use all the FILO infrastructure (reading lots of filesystems, using a recovery with a nice menu on a USB stick, integrate with the flash protection that FILO offers (lock flash writes before FILO executes external code for example)
> Variant 1 does waste a lot of flash space and is unable to cope with new > flash chips, and you have no way to recover if flashing goes wrong > because you can't upgrade flashrom in the first place. It is the only > standalone solution, though, and it is fast. > Variant 2 is essentially a stripped down SerialICE with one or two extra > commands. Rather slow, but you can upgrade the controlling flashrom app > on the master computer (and test patches) without having to mess with > the contents of the flash in the slave (to be reflashed) computer. > Besides that, it allows even such stuff as PCI card reflashing (for gPXE > and stuff). > Variant 3 has a high initial load time, but flashing will be fast. No > guarantees on how to recover if flashrom crashes or exits prematurely, > though. > I agree all those variants have some drawbacks... Stefan -- coreboot mailing list: [email protected] http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
