How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
Question, has anyone tried booting freebsd on raw hardware, i.e. absent a bios? I am curious as to how good a job it can do if, e.g., no enable bits are set in PIIX4, BARs are not set on PCI devices, no IRQs are assigned, and so on. Anyone feel they are close enough to this to say? See www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios to see why I am asking. I see no reason I could not also put FreeBSD as the BIOS in nvram as well. If you're trying to build a cluster, you have to kill the BIOS. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
Question, has anyone tried booting freebsd on raw hardware, i.e. absent a bios? I am curious as to how good a job it can do if, e.g., no enable bits are set in PIIX4, BARs are not set on PCI devices, no IRQs are assigned, and so on. Anyone feel they are close enough to this to say? Not good. You'd also have to take care of PCI setup, interrupt routing, any board-specific hacks using the GPIO bits, etc. (eg. on most systems you'll need to turn the CPU fan, power LEDs, etc. on) Doing this without the BIOS is likely to be a major PITA, and different for every single board. Outside of some expensive and boring embedded vendors' products, you're unlikely to get the sort of information you need without reverse-engineering the BIOS that's already there. See www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios to see why I am asking. I see no reason I could not also put FreeBSD as the BIOS in nvram as well. If you're trying to build a cluster, you have to kill the BIOS. Well, they're going to have the same basic stuff, and I can see that they're not having much fun trying to get there. I'm curious as to what you mean by "have to kill the BIOS" though; I'm not seeing why it's an issue. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Mike Smith wrote: Well, they're going to have the same basic stuff, and I can see that they're not having much fun trying to get there. actually, "they" is "me": that's my project. Yeep. You don't know Fra Dolcini, do you? That looks like a Really Unpleasant Undertaking. 8( I'm curious as to what you mean by "have to kill the BIOS" though; I'm not seeing why it's an issue. Unless you've had to work with 1024 BIOS upgrades, it's not easy to see the need :-) Er. Ok, I can dig that. However, there are only about three or four different flash architectures commonly in use, and we can hope that people are going to start using things like the Intel Firmware Hub, and hopefully EFI later on. I realise that you're not about to throw your cluster hardware over for a pile of IA64 boxes just yet, but it strikes me that it'd be easier just to write a userland flash updater than to rewrite the BIOS from scratch. 8) Nevertheless, I'll drop it here. I was curious what FreeBSD could do. Nothing, I'm afraid. We expect the plaform firmware to work as expected/ documented... -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Mike Smith wrote: Yeep. You don't know Fra Dolcini, do you? That looks like a Really Unpleasant Undertaking. 8( It's getting there. Also SiS is now a supporter. Long term, we may see motherboards specifically designed for the OSS community, with real docs yet. Also, I can't see any way to get to 3-second reboot (one of the things we need) given the stupid way BIOSes work. PXE is not an answer. cluster hardware over for a pile of IA64 boxes just yet, but it strikes me that it'd be easier just to write a userland flash updater than to rewrite the BIOS from scratch. 8) You haven't look at how intel designs and documents some of their motherboards, particularly the L440GX+. They won't tell people what they need to know to update flash on this one. Result: you have to boot DOS to upgrade flash. Stupid of them. Also, there are an amazing number of advantages to having a real OS in the flash. Once you start thinking about it, it becomes hard to live without. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Mike Smith wrote: Yeep. You don't know Fra Dolcini, do you? That looks like a Really Unpleasant Undertaking. 8( It's getting there. Also SiS is now a supporter. Long term, we may see motherboards specifically designed for the OSS community, with real docs yet. Also, I can't see any way to get to 3-second reboot (one of the things we need) given the stupid way BIOSes work. PXE is not an answer. Having a chipset vendor onside isn't a bad thing, for sure, and I can see where the current design of PC BIOS code wouldn't help. One thing that puzzles me though is why you want to stick with the PC BIOS... cluster hardware over for a pile of IA64 boxes just yet, but it strikes me that it'd be easier just to write a userland flash updater than to rewrite the BIOS from scratch. 8) You haven't look at how intel designs and documents some of their motherboards, particularly the L440GX+. They won't tell people what they need to know to update flash on this one. Result: you have to boot DOS to upgrade flash. Stupid of them. Er, I have, which is why I was observing that what you're trying to do on the larger scale is just a bit masochistic. Also, there are an amazing number of advantages to having a real OS in the flash. Once you start thinking about it, it becomes hard to live without. I'd prefer real firmware, actually. OF isn't all that bad, and I seem to recall that Parag Patel is porting it to run on the L440GX+. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How good a job of PCI config will freebsd do?
Mike Smith wrote: I'd prefer real firmware, actually. OF isn't all that bad, and I seem to recall that Parag Patel is porting it to run on the L440GX+. Heh - yup, I'm right in the middle of port SmartFirmware to the L440GX+. Definitely masochistic. I've decided that drilling a hole through my head would be faster with the same results, only with less pain. Anyway, we've had our L440GX+ surgically altered and it's now sporting a Meritec socket in place of the flash part. I've just now ordered a PromICE with trace as the old hit-n-miss techniques to get something out of the serial port from ROM just ain't working. I've come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing about PC hardware that is in any way shape or form designed correctly. *Everything* about it is wrong wrong wrong. Don't get me started. The port is progressing. I already have a RAM version of SF running happily, probing devices, booting images off of the net, etc. Getting it bootstrapped out of ROM is the current task. SF always runs in 32-bit `flat' mode, ROM or RAM. Ronald G. Minnich wrote: It's getting there. Also SiS is now a supporter. Long term, we may see motherboards specifically designed for the OSS community, with real docs yet. Also, I can't see any way to get to 3-second reboot (one of the things we need) given the stupid way BIOSes work. PXE is not an answer. Don't know if SmartFirmware will be able to meet the 3-second boot, but it should definitely be faster than a BIOS. For one thing, we don't pretend that we can run an exhaustive and completely trustworthy memory test. :) (Not even sure if this is possible, actually.) You haven't look at how intel designs and documents some of their motherboards, particularly the L440GX+. They won't tell people what they need to know to update flash on this one. Result: you have to boot DOS to upgrade flash. Stupid of them. This is why I'm burning the entire flash part in an external programmer. Once SmartFirmware is running on the motherboard, it'll be able to update and burn new images over the net, including your original one. Bootstrapping will still need a floppy to boot under the old BIOS, run a RAM version of SmartFirmware, download a ROM image over the net, burn it in, then reset. -- Parag Patel To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
