li pan wrote: > Hi, guys > I want to implement system recovery features in bios. > The basic idea is: > When booting, the user hit some key to enter our program, or else go > for the normal boot process. > The user can use the bios to back up his os. If the os fails and can't > boot, he can fix his > os using the backup. And he will be able to use bios to browse his hard > disk. Basically like some features found on some HP,IBM's pcs. > > I have done windows and linux system programming but have never touch > BIOS, I think maybe linuxbios can help me. Here is my questions: > > 1 Can linuxbios do this stuff? I think most likely it is yes:-)
Yes. > 2 This will be installed on some pcs which run linux, windows or other > os. So maybe we need the award/ami bios coexist with linuxbios on the > same pc. ( We will assemble these pcs, we can choose which type of > mainboard to use, so there will be only one type of "old" bios) > Is this possible? Yes. > I mean we want to let award bios to serve normal os, > and linuxbios to do the system recovery stuff. Maybe change some part > of award bios to let it boot linuxbios once user hit the key. You basically need a DualBIOS system, that allows you to switch between a main and backup bios. > We don't mind if we can simply throw award bios away, but we want to > make sure our pcs can run any "normal" os. True. > 3 How much space will all these take? Can we fit them is one bios > chip? I don't know how IBM do these, maybe they use another chip to > store their system recovery program, this feature can be found on old > ibm pcs, but in those days, bios chip was small. It depends. I you want to go for the DualBIOS approach, then you need a double size ROM. If you only need a recovery module (i.e. extension ROM) without an additional BIOS, then all you need is FILO (~50kb) plus your UserInterface. > 4 Most import, am I on the right track? I am not familiar with low > level programming ( not this low), sorry if my idea sounds too crazy. It's a great idea. Thanks! -- Al -- linuxbios mailing list [email protected] http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
