On 02/04/2013 08:50 AM, ntnc41 wrote: > Hi all, > > I came across few tasks/open projects in EDK on which work needs to be > done and contributions are required. > > For example, > > o Multiprocessor support in UefiCpuPkg/CpuDxe > o Read-only ext2 driver > > How can I find out exact stauts of these projects? What work is going > on and what features are bring added?
I'm aware of two ext2fs drivers for EFI: - One driver originated with rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net/), and is also being distributed with my rEFInd (http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/) and with the Clover boot loader (https://sourceforge.net/projects/cloverefiboot/). It includes some GPLed code, though, which makes its inclusion with the mainline TianoCore package problematical. OTOH, if you want a standalone driver that can be loaded as a .efi file, it may be all you need. Also, if you check the source files, you'll see that most of them bear BSD copyright notices; IIRC, only the fsw_ext2.c and associated header files bear GPL copyright notices. Therefore, you might be able to use the driver's original wrapper code to simplify the task of developing a BSD-licensed driver. Another point: There's an ext4fs variant of this driver, which works fine with ext2fs and ext3fs. Thus, if the GPL licensing isn't an issue, you might want to skip the ext2fs driver and use the ext4fs driver instead. One final comment: This driver has performance problems on some systems. These are worst under VirtualBox: Loading a Linux kernel and initrd from a FAT filesystem under VirtualBox takes something like 2 seconds, but that goes up to 200 seconds (3 minutes and 20 seconds) with the ext2fs driver. On most "real" hardware, the problem is much less severe, though -- loading the kernel and initrd takes 5-10 seconds on most computers I've tried. Other drivers that use the same wrapper also have performance problems, but they're not nearly as bad -- the ReiserFS driver, for instance, loads the kernel and initrd in 20 seconds under VirtualBox. - Ext2Pkg, based at https://bitbucket.org/alinrus/ext2pkg and with https://github.com/the-ridikulus-rat/Tianocore_Ext2Pkg as another source. I never got this one to work, but you might have more luck with it. I haven't checked every source file, but the ones I have examined all have BSD copyright notices, so they ought to be safe for inclusion in the mainline TianoCore build. Of course, the problem is getting it to work. Maybe I did something wrong or maybe the fix is easy -- or maybe it's just in bad shape. Given that my own needs are met by a standalone GPLed driver, I didn't put much effort into trying to get this one to work. It's conceivable that you'd be able to use Christoph Pfisterer's original rEFIt/ext2fs wrapper code along with functions from Ext2Pkg or some other source to create a BSD-licensed ext2fs driver, but I've not looked into this possibility. If you decide to tackle the project, I'd be happy to test whatever you create, but I doubt if I have sufficient expertise or time to help with coding. -- Rod Smith [email protected] http://www.rodsbooks.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ edk2-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/edk2-devel
