Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu 2000-06-15 (15:25), Ronald G Minnich wrote: well linuxbios is what I started here, and I pinged some folks on this list about supporting freebsd as well as linux, and got a 'no interest' back from some folks. I'm still up for it. I think it's easy. 'linuxbios' will only support booting off Linux partitions? I doubt they're replacing a multi-purpose, occasionally not-all-that-clever thing, with a single-purpose very-often not-all-that-clever thing? What 'support' will FreeBSD require in 'linuxbios'? Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner Sunesi Clinical Systems [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Mon 2000-06-19 (11:45), Neil Blakey-Milner wrote: 'linuxbios' will only support booting off Linux partitions? I doubt they're replacing a multi-purpose, occasionally not-all-that-clever thing, with a single-purpose very-often not-all-that-clever thing? Ah wait, having read a bit more, they are. Good luck to them. I would have thought that redo-ing the entire BIOS would be a bit extreme. A 'simpler' serial console video/keyboard interaction firmware chip would have been nice. If you really want to be funky, add in network support for TCP/IP-based BIOS interaction. Otherwise, for the five-nines, replacing the whole BIOS is extreme. (says he, wondering why malfunctioning hardware tends to make his brain malfunction) Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner Sunesi Clinical Systems [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Neil Blakey-Milner wrote: On Thu 2000-06-15 (15:25), Ronald G Minnich wrote: 'linuxbios' will only support booting off Linux partitions? linuxbios is getting to be a misnomer, but ... linuxbios is a simple chunk of FLASH-based code that gunzips a kernel image to RAM. That's it. It doesn't do much of anything but get DRAM turned on (not hard) and some other bits that OSes don't yet do well. Although, I am finding that increasingly the open source OSes are taking on more and more hardware tasks because so many BIOSes screw up hardware config. The APIC support in the more recent kernels is pretty amazing. LinuxBIOS DOES NOT: 1) read disks 2) talk to network cards 3) etc. It knows how to get ram up, it is mostly written in C (except for that 'get ram up' part, obviously), and it counts on the OS to do the heavy lifting. It works on two very different motherboards. We're working on an Alpha port now. Our long term goal is not to control this thing. Best case scenario is the vendors buy in and support it directly. We have one case in hand where this is happening. Mainboards from this one vendor will ship with LinuxBIOS in flash. We have a couple of industrial partners at this point, including a new one that just wrote me this morning who you would recognize (you'll see their name on the web page in a week or so). I would love to see FreeBSD support work. I can't do it much anymore, since unfortunately the HPC cluster community seems less and less concerned with FreeBSD nowadays, which I think is a tragedy. But I'll do what I can. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Ronald G Minnich wrote: On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Neil Blakey-Milner wrote: On Thu 2000-06-15 (15:25), Ronald G Minnich wrote: 'linuxbios' will only support booting off Linux partitions? linuxbios is getting to be a misnomer, but ... linuxbios is a simple chunk of FLASH-based code that gunzips a kernel image to RAM. That's it. It doesn't do much of anything but get DRAM turned on (not hard) and some other bits that OSes don't yet do well. snip Our long term goal is not to control this thing. Best case scenario is the vendors buy in and support it directly. We have one case in hand where this is happening. Mainboards from this one vendor will ship with LinuxBIOS in flash. Hmm. It seems like it would just make more sense for the motherboard manufacturers to (a) fix their BIOS's to allow serial-port access, and (b) provider more flash where you can stuff a "disk" image to boot from, with appropriate support for accessing it as an IDE or floppy drive. That way it works with all versions of all operating systems (well, only those that can do the serial console stuff, of course). Doing LinuxBIOS seems like the long way around, here. I can't imagine that serial-port BIOS access hasn't happened because it's too hard - it's just because BIOS makers don't care. Nonetheless, it is a cool notion, scott To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Parag Patel writes: : manage their rack-mount systems remotely using the serial port without : video and without a keyboard - something that few motherboards support. Might I point out that there is the console weasil (or something to that effect) that converts memory mapped video - serial output. I haven't used them yet, however, and don't recall the URL. : One problem with flash disks and such is that by the time the machine is : ready to boot from one, it's already well past where you'd like to have : control over the BIOS settings. This is true. You have to set things up correctly in the BIOS. However, I've been booting of DOC2k and CF cards for about 6 months (no, wait, it is more like 9-10 months at this point) and this works well for our embedded systems. I looked at putting an OS image into the end of the flash used to hold the BIOS and punted on that as taking too much time and generally that it would be too hard to update. Warner To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 07:29:53PM -0700, Mike Smith wrote: If your customer's not _desperate_ for a super-low-cost solution, I'd suggest any of the Intel boards that offer EMP (most of these also offer BIOS-over-serial support, actually - as do a number of other vendors, IIRC AMI do this on some of their boards as well). See http://www.realweasel.com/ for one such vendor. Pricing is available only by request, but check this out: "The PC Weasel distinguishes itself even further by being an open-source product. Every purchaser receives a source license for the Weasel's onboard microcontroller code. If you don't like some aspect of the board's behaviour as shipped by us, you're free to modify it using a gcc-based toolchain. The code store is flash memory that can be written without special equipment, and there's a second serial port provided for debugging." -- Ben 220 go.ahead.make.my.day ESMTP Postfix To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 06:13:32PM +0100, void wrote: On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 07:29:53PM -0700, Mike Smith wrote: If your customer's not _desperate_ for a super-low-cost solution, I'd suggest any of the Intel boards that offer EMP (most of these also offer BIOS-over-serial support, actually - as do a number of other vendors, IIRC AMI do this on some of their boards as well). See http://www.realweasel.com/ for one such vendor. Pricing is available only by request, but check this out: Yeah, well, as a supposed customer of theirs, let me add this tidbit. I ordered 5 of these cards for evaluation purposes in mid April. I still do not have them. After having our purchasing people hassle them, they claimed manufacturing difficulties, and the current production run has been pushed to at least the first week in July. So, once again, we are reminded -- just because you saw it on the web, doesn't mean that it is really shipping. I'm still hoping they do ship me the boards and they work as advertised, but I figure I would save other folks some hassle. -Kurt To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: I have not built clusters over 200 nodes, but I almost never go into the BIOS for configurations. And the systems that I have used, include serial access within the BIOS. And adding PXE roms will make things nicer on the install front. But my current system is a single floppy, and that works well. As someone who has built one of these large systems, the best thing we could want is OpenFirmware with a ROM monitor and Lights-Out Monitoring. Basically make a PC act like a Sun Netra T1. :) In real life, the only BIOS problems that require human intervention are usually hardware related. You can't avoid the trip to the colo in this case. The buildout cost is pretty spendy too, having to buy a Cisco 2511 or similiar term server for every 24-odd boxen. For us, this would mean buying 20 or so units and cabling up every box, which we don't have the time to do. We just leave 9" mono VGA displays and keyboards in the cage and call up the remote-hands when things die. We let them power cycle things but if it's really hosed we drive over and frob the box ourselves. BTW the PXE loader stuff is invaluable for installs. Saves having to track down a (usually broken) floppy to load a system up. A few keypresses at boot and voila, new FreeBSD box. :) I will probably give a talk at BSDCon about these issues, if I can get everything lined up. The best people to determin if it is nessesary is Yahoo and Hotmail. Since they have worked with these issues in the thousands of machines. Sigh, it's not easy being #6. Even with 16 million confirmed members eGroups gets no respect :) Doug White| FreeBSD: The Power to Serve [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
John Baldwin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The best people to determin if it is nessesary is Yahoo and Hotmail. Since they have worked with these issues in the thousands of machines. Actually, Yahoo is basically who funded the PXE development as their employees did most of the development and testing with PXE and now use it in production, IIRC. Right now it is being used to build our machines with eventual plans to run it in production, but that is when we get to diskless machines. At Hotmail, they used a bootp kernel on the harddisk to install their systems. -- Paul Saab Technical Yahoo [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do You .. uhh .. Yahoo!? To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Two words: "forget it". I read an article about Linux BIOS project on Slashdot.org. Is there anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS? I really like to see something like 'boot net - install' or serial console. It would be cool to have dignostics routine, too. I haven't looked at the project recently, but it seems that the name should be changed from "Linux BIOS" to "New BIOS that doesn't make stupid assumptions". The main reasons people need to go into the BIOS: - change the clock - What? You added memory? You must now go into setup, do nothing, and then save exit! - Occasionally, (new systems and when the BBRAM gets glitched), go in and tweak a few timing/cache/misc. settings - Hard drives -- there's absolutely no reason these days to have to set the parameters for these. Even the "NONE" setting is pointless -- if you don't see a drive within a few seconds, there's not one there. The moral of this story: Other than the clock and MAYBE some of the timing parameters, the need for a "BIOS Setup Screen" is pointless. Get a BIOS version running that allows for some sort of protected on-the-fly configuration changes, and the world is a much better place. Maybe we should drop a few hints to the group working on this project to get it right, not create some kludged monster -- then, with the proper support on the part of the OS, it would be useful for pretty much anything, not just Linux. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong... But it's unlikely. :) (Sorry, a sarcastic Dennis Miller rip-off there.) --mike - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Understated/funny man-page sentence of the current time period: From route(4) on FreeBSD-3.4, DESCRIPTION section: "FreeBSD provides some packet routing facilities." ...duh... Mike Nowlin, N8NVW [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.viewsnet.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
I'm interested, since from reading the linixboot page it seems like you can get, essentially, and instant-on rommable FreeBSD if this were done, and I can think of lots of things to do with that! I can think of a few useful things too! I might even be able to offer a bit of help (at least testing...). Let me know if you ever get around to working on this. Fred -- Fred Clift - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Remember: If brute force doesn't work, you're just not using enough. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Sergey Babkin wrote: Eh ? I don't quite get how Sun could be associated with Open Firmware. Probably because they developed it? It always looked quite proprietary to me. Yeah, those IEEE standards are terribly proprietary. IEEE-1275 in this case. You can find more info at http://www.openfirmware.org/ -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Doug White wrote: On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: I have not built clusters over 200 nodes, but I almost never go into the BIOS for configurations. And the systems that I have used, include serial access within the BIOS. And adding PXE roms will make things nicer on the install front. But my current system is a single floppy, and that works well. As someone who has built one of these large systems, the best thing we could want is OpenFirmware with a ROM monitor and Lights-Out Monitoring. Basically make a PC act like a Sun Netra T1. :) I love the NetraT1, I am now using them at Major broadcasters and at DirecTV. But gettting the LOM functionality to x86 is a completly diffrent matter. Since it has to act independtly from the mainboard. I would much rather see the BIOS be converted to OpenBoot. Since that works greatly. In real life, the only BIOS problems that require human intervention are usually hardware related. You can't avoid the trip to the colo in this case. I picked the remote hands service plan at my colo to be that human. When I see it is an issue to go that route. The buildout cost is pretty spendy too, having to buy a Cisco 2511 or similiar term server for every 24-odd boxen. For us, this would mean buying 20 or so units and cabling up every box, which we don't have the time to do. We just leave 9" mono VGA displays and keyboards in the cage and call up the remote-hands when things die. We let them power cycle things but if it's really hosed we drive over and frob the box ourselves. I went the 2611 route with 32port async module, but the overall time and effort does save in the long run. I am a firm beliver that serial console for servers, and remote systems is not an option. I is a must. It has saved alot of down time. I delgated the remote-hands to being my human on-off switch, or a "blinky light" monitor. BTW the PXE loader stuff is invaluable for installs. Saves having to track down a (usually broken) floppy to load a system up. A few keypresses at boot and voila, new FreeBSD box. :) I will probably give a talk at BSDCon about these issues, if I can get everything lined up. And I will be right there in the audiance. The best people to determin if it is nessesary is Yahoo and Hotmail. Since they have worked with these issues in the thousands of machines. Sigh, it's not easy being #6. Even with 16 million confirmed members eGroups gets no respect :) Yeah, I normaly forget about them, I think eCircles uses FBSD as well. Stefan Doug White| FreeBSD: The Power to Serve [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: :- None of the motherboard or chipset vendors (except for SiS) are even :- slightly interested in talking to us. Are they interested in talking to Linux folks? If so, isn't that a reasonable alternative? (I mean, team up with some Linux folks to get the info...) -- Robert Withrow -- (+1 978 288 8256) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 11:13:18 EDT, Robert Withrow wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: :- None of the motherboard or chipset vendors (except for SiS) are even :- slightly interested in talking to us. Are they interested in talking to Linux folks? If so, isn't that a reasonable alternative? (I mean, team up with some Linux folks to get the info...) Actually, the SiS folks are working with the Linux folks. Other than them, no-one else seems to be interested. SiS doesn't make motherboards - just the chipsets - so they're having much the same level of pain that we are trying to figure out how things need to be turned on. At least they have BIOS gurus to help out. No-one else seems to be interested. There seems to be plenty of demand for servers, which is why we decided to attempt this lunacy. If anyone has a useful contact at a motherboard manufacturer, *please* let us or the LinuxBIOS folks know. -- Parag To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Parag Patel wrote:
No-one else seems to be interested.
actually, that's not quite true. we're seeing a fair amount of interest
here. I suspect vendors are not that interested in supporting another BIOS
unless/until they see potential $$$ ("value proposition" in MBA speak). We
seem to have found a workable value proposition here. It won't cost them
anything, and they get the results of our work on sourceforge.net, and
there may be competitive advantage in the Linux market at some point.
I think Parag's work is quite good but he has a tougher job than we do.
but we'll see how it all plays out :-)
ron
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Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: I delgated the remote-hands to being my human on-off switch, or a "blinky light" monitor. Buy a bunch of RPC-2s or RPC-4s http://baytechdcd.com/products/rpcseries.shtml -- | Matthew N. Dodd | '78 Datsun 280Z | '75 Volvo 164E | FreeBSD/NetBSD | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 2 x '84 Volvo 245DL| ix86,sparc,pmax | | http://www.jurai.net/~winter | This Space For Rent | ISO8802.5 4ever | To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Wes Peters wrote: Sergey Babkin wrote: Eh ? I don't quite get how Sun could be associated with Open Firmware. Probably because they developed it? Ah, that was my ignorance. never knew that Open Firmware is a trademarked concept, like Open Source. It always looked quite proprietary to me. Yeah, those IEEE standards are terribly proprietary. IEEE-1275 in this case. You can find more info at http://www.openfirmware.org/ Thanks for the pointer. When I encountered this thing in a Sun workstation (without any docs included) this Forth-based interface looked theoretically wonderful but practically rather awful. I still don't know if it can be configured to boot from the first available disk on the SCSI bus as opposed to booting from a disk with specific SCSI ID though I spent half a day trying to figure it out. Maybe I'll find it out now. -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Why? PXE will allow net installs, or diskless. And Serial Console is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). Stefan On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Jung-uk Kim wrote: Hi, I read an article about Linux BIOS project on Slashdot.org. Is there anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS? I really like to see something like 'boot net - install' or serial console. It would be cool to have dignostics routine, too. Jung-uk Kim Jung-uk Kim: Unix System Programmer E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Today's fortune cookie: Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Thus spake Stefan Molnar ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). Also on low-end machines... Alex -- cat: /home/alex/.sig: No such file or directory To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Alexander Langer wrote: Thus spake Stefan Molnar ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). Also on low-end machines... According to pxeboot(8) from 5.0 snapshot: pxeboot is a modified version of the system third-stage bootstrap loader(8) configured to run under Intel's Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) system. PXE is a form of smart boot ROM, built into Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 and 3Com 3c905c Ethernet cards, and Ethernet-equipped Intel motherboards. Which means I cannot use it since I don't have the NIC and I don't want to buy the hardware for this. I want 'PXE' from BIOS so that I can keep my cards. :) Second, the motherboard I have doesn't support serial console. I couldn't find any BIOS update for the mobo. Jung-uk Kim Alex -- cat: /home/alex/.sig: No such file or directory To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Two words: "forget it". I read an article about Linux BIOS project on Slashdot.org. Is there anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS? I really like to see something like 'boot net - install' or serial console. It would be cool to have dignostics routine, too. Jung-uk Kim Jung-uk Kim: Unix System Programmer E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Today's fortune cookie: Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message -- \\ 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: Why? PXE will allow net installs, or diskless. And Serial Console is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). well, now you see why i'm not pushing linuxbios too hard in the freebsd world. If you think PXE and serial consoles fix your cluster problems, then you haven't build anything really big. PXE is not a good design. But I'm not interested in arguing ... ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
well linuxbios is what I started here, and I pinged some folks on this list about supporting freebsd as well as linux, and got a 'no interest' back from some folks. I'm still up for it. I think it's easy. I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: :- and got a 'no interest' back from some folks. I'm interested, since from reading the linixboot page it seems like you can get, essentially, and instant-on rommable FreeBSD if this were done, and I can think of lots of things to do with that! Don't know how much help I can offer, though. So my opinion is pretty much worthless. ;-) -- Robert Withrow -- (+1 978 288 8256) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: :- and got a 'no interest' back from some folks. The response was not "no interest", it was "you're totally nuts - this is not a usefully solvable problem". I'm interested, since from reading the linixboot page it seems like you can get, essentially, and instant-on rommable FreeBSD if this were done, and I can think of lots of things to do with that! You can come fairly close to this already with the right approach, it's just expensive. -- \\ 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Mike Smith wrote: well linuxbios is what I started here, and I pinged some folks on this list about supporting freebsd as well as linux, and got a 'no interest' back from some folks. I'm still up for it. I think it's easy. I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the new Intel's proposal for BIOS. It's the only thing that will be (and is) on IA-64, and also will be retrofitted on the 32-bit machines. It's a very flexible thing including extensive API, OS-independent loadable drivers, networking, serial console, etc. I'm in progress of reading the specs (avaliable from the Intel's developer web site), so I don't know more detail yet. The spec says that the full source code of reference implementation is available for free. By the way, they used FreeBSD as the base of their EFI API implementation (libc, networking and other). -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Sergey Babkin wrote: Mike Smith wrote: I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. I just mentioned to mike that parag has been talking to me for the last while, and in fact is encouraged enough by recent results that he's taking another look. Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the We're looking at it. Do you really believe in reference implementations? I don't. I sure hope they've stopped zeroing memory on reset ... this is one of the drivers for linuxbios. But it is still interesting. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
I have not built clusters over 200 nodes, but I almost never go into the BIOS for configurations. And the systems that I have used, include serial access within the BIOS. And adding PXE roms will make things nicer on the install front. But my current system is a single floppy, and that works well. The best people to determin if it is nessesary is Yahoo and Hotmail. Since they have worked with these issues in the thousands of machines. On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Ronald G Minnich wrote: On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: Why? PXE will allow net installs, or diskless. And Serial Console is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). well, now you see why i'm not pushing linuxbios too hard in the freebsd world. If you think PXE and serial consoles fix your cluster problems, then you haven't build anything really big. PXE is not a good design. But I'm not interested in arguing ... ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the new Intel's proposal for BIOS. It's the only thing that will be (and is) on IA-64, and also will be retrofitted on the 32-bit machines. It's a very flexible thing including extensive API, OS-independent loadable drivers, networking, serial console, etc. I'm in progress of reading the specs (avaliable from the Intel's developer web site), so I don't know more detail yet. The spec says that the full source code of reference implementation is available for free. By the way, they used FreeBSD as the base of their EFI API implementation (libc, networking and other). It's still entirely useless without the _board_specific_ initialisation code, which vendors typically aren't going to just hand out. EFI can layer over an existing PC BIOS (ie. you still need a BIOS), or it will require board-specific code if it's going to be the native firmware. The real issue with replacing a system's BIOS is not the top layer (services etc.), it's initialisation and random magic that is entirely specific to the board's actual implementation details. -- \\ 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:47:32 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. Thanks, but I think I'm a fool for even *attempting* this project. :) That said, I'm trying to get a SuperMicro P6DGE going right now. I toasted my L440GX+ or I'd probably be further along. I *think* I can talk to the ISA bus but am not yet sure. I can't seem to wake up the Winbond 977TF ISA I/O chip. The L440GX uses the same GX and PIIX4 chipset but a different I/O chip. The problem, as Mike said, is the magic goo hidden away in the BIOS ROMs that actually initializes parts and patches around some most *interesting* bugs in the hardware. Each chipset and motherboard seem to have their own sets of bugs and workarounds. None of the motherboard or chipset vendors (except for SiS) are even slightly interested in talking to us. I've even resorted to diassembling the BIOS ROM to try to figure out what's going on. This is another exercise in frustration, but we did manage to find some magic undocumented ISA ports being initialized. We have no idea what it's initializing. My current plan of action is to plug in a vanilla ISA card and use another serial port to see if I can get something out of it. This has lead to another comedy of errors as there's isn't enough room in the rackmount case to plugin an ISA card *with connectors*. Sigh. I'm remounting the motherboard in a vanilla cheapie ATX case right now... Anyway, if I can get something out a serial port, I can start dumping registers, and then hopefully make some progress. Lots of "if"s... Unfortunately, all this work will have to be done all over again for the next motherboard, and the next, and the next... -- Parag Patel To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
The best people to determin if it is nessesary is Yahoo and Hotmail. Since they have worked with these issues in the thousands of machines. Actually, Yahoo is basically who funded the PXE development as their employees did most of the development and testing with PXE and now use it in production, IIRC. On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Ronald G Minnich wrote: On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Stefan Molnar wrote: Why? PXE will allow net installs, or diskless. And Serial Console is already supported. ( On some high end machines serial console works in the prom as well). well, now you see why i'm not pushing linuxbios too hard in the freebsd world. If you think PXE and serial consoles fix your cluster problems, then you haven't build anything really big. PXE is not a good design. But I'm not interested in arguing ... PXE is simply a layer over the network card, it's not ACPI or EFI. ron -- John Baldwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Mike Smith wrote: I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the new Intel's proposal for BIOS. It's the only thing that will be (and is) on IA-64, and also will be retrofitted on the 32-bit machines. It's a very flexible thing including extensive API, OS-independent loadable drivers, networking, serial console, etc. I'm in progress of reading the specs (avaliable from the Intel's developer web site), so I don't know more detail yet. The spec says that the full source code of reference implementation is available for free. By the way, they used FreeBSD as the base of their EFI API implementation (libc, networking and other). It's still entirely useless without the _board_specific_ initialisation code, which vendors typically aren't going to just hand out. Right, but why would you want to replace the existing BIOS ? You get it with the board anyway. And the EFI spec requires such things as serial port console support, so they should not be much of issue for EFI-compliant boards. EFI can layer over an existing PC BIOS (ie. you still need a BIOS), or it will require board-specific code if it's going to be the native firmware. The real issue with replacing a system's BIOS is not the top layer (services etc.), it's initialisation and random magic that is entirely specific to the board's actual implementation details. I think it depends mostly on the chipset used, hardly the board manufacturers add much or anything at all. And there are not that many modern chipsets on the market, and seems like their number is reducing over time as Intel gets more involved. -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Mike Smith wrote: I'd suggest you go talk to Parag Patel, who's just wasted about three months of his life trying to make SmartFirmware run on _one_ supposedly well-documented board. Parag is nobody's fool, and I consider his results pretty representative of the issue. Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the new Intel's proposal for BIOS. It's the only thing that will be (and is) on IA-64, and also will be retrofitted on the 32-bit machines. It's a very flexible thing including extensive API, OS-independent loadable drivers, networking, serial console, etc. I'm in progress of reading the specs (avaliable from the Intel's developer web site), so I don't know more detail yet. The spec says that the full source code of reference implementation is available for free. By the way, they used FreeBSD as the base of their EFI API implementation (libc, networking and other). It's still entirely useless without the _board_specific_ initialisation code, which vendors typically aren't going to just hand out. Right, but why would you want to replace the existing BIOS ? That's more or less my point - I think the only argument for it so far is sheer masochism. 8) The real issue with replacing a system's BIOS is not the top layer (services etc.), it's initialisation and random magic that is entirely specific to the board's actual implementation details. I think it depends mostly on the chipset used, hardly the board manufacturers add much or anything at all. And there are not that many modern chipsets on the market, and seems like their number is reducing over time as Intel gets more involved. Actually, general experience suggests that's not the case at all. -- \\ 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Ronald G Minnich wrote: On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Sergey Babkin wrote: Maybe I'm completely mistunderstanding the subject, but what about EFI (Extendable Firmware Interface) ? It's the We're looking at it. Do you really believe in reference implementations? I don't. I sure hope they've stopped zeroing memory on reset ... this is one of the drivers for linuxbios. Well, supposedly that reference implementation is what's inside the Itanium boxes (actually the box I have access too has version 0.92 while the latest one is 0.99). Though maybe the published code is not complete. But it is still interesting. As far as I understand the idea is that you won't need to replace the BIOS. It should have some limited pseudo-disk in flash memory with a FAT-32 partition on it where the drivers and loaders can be added as needed. Any kind of clustering initialization, or boot loaders can be written as applications in EFI API. If that's not enough then a special boot FAT-32 partition may be created on a disk (on any disk, may create one (or maybe many - not sure) on each disk) where the rest will be stored. BTW, EFI permits unlimited number of partitions on the disk with size limited by 64-bit sector number. Microsoft has contributed the FAT-32 code for the free reference implementation for free. For example, Linux-64 stores it kernel, boot loader and boot parameters file in this boot partition. EFI also has a mini-shell which gives some rudimentary control from the console, and yes, it supposedly supports the serial console. I don't quite understand it yet (one of the features is that the result of "help" command scrolls very fast, so only the last screen can be seen) but I plan to look closer at it. -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Well, the main reason we're replacing the BIOS is that we've had several requests from people who want relatively sane firmware in their computers. :) One of our (potential) customers needs to completely manage their rack-mount systems remotely using the serial port without video and without a keyboard - something that few motherboards support. Another option is to create a custom ISA or PCI card with pretty much just a ROM on in, let the BIOS set things up, then completely take over control of the machine. This is a lot more work and more expensive, not to mention taking up one of the relatively few slots, but it would work in more computers. (Some BIOSes still refuse to run without video and keyboard though.) One problem with flash disks and such is that by the time the machine is ready to boot from one, it's already well past where you'd like to have control over the BIOS settings. Frankly, I'd just as soon support PowerPC or Alpha ATX motherboards with SmartFirmware. Anyone know of inexpensive ATX non-x86 boards? :) -- Parag Patel To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Well, the main reason we're replacing the BIOS is that we've had several requests from people who want relatively sane firmware in their computers. :) One of our (potential) customers needs to completely manage their rack-mount systems remotely using the serial port without video and without a keyboard - something that few motherboards support. Intel are actually pretty aggressive on this (eg. EMP and IPMI), but the boards they offer it on aren't cost-effective. 8( Another option is to create a custom ISA or PCI card with pretty much just a ROM on in, let the BIOS set things up, then completely take over control of the machine. This is a lot more work and more expensive, not to mention taking up one of the relatively few slots, but it would work in more computers. (Some BIOSes still refuse to run without video and keyboard though.) It's actually not _that_ expensive, but you're right about interoperability. By now, based on the timeframe I've watched you through, I'd say that you should have a board that looks like a plain VGA framebuffer and has a keyboard cable hung out the back, and software up and running. Build cost at 100 off would probably be $100. One problem with flash disks and such is that by the time the machine is ready to boot from one, it's already well past where you'd like to have control over the BIOS settings. This is a problem, yes, but rewriting the BIOS, bootloader and parts of the kernel isn't the path of least resistance, IMO. 8) Frankly, I'd just as soon support PowerPC or Alpha ATX motherboards with SmartFirmware. Anyone know of inexpensive ATX non-x86 boards? :) Well, Alpha Processor now have SRM on the UP1000, but this isn't what you'd call "inexpensive", and the board's not very compact either (Slot B module mounted vertically). If your customer's not _desperate_ for a super-low-cost solution, I'd suggest any of the Intel boards that offer EMP (most of these also offer BIOS-over-serial support, actually - as do a number of other vendors, IIRC AMI do this on some of their boards as well). -- \\ 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: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:29:53 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: By now, based on the timeframe I've watched you through, I'd say that you should have a board that looks like a plain VGA framebuffer and has a keyboard cable hung out the back, and software up and running. Build cost at 100 off would probably be $100. Yeah, if I were a hardware guy. :) Besides there are other people taking this approach like PC Weasel. This is a problem, yes, but rewriting the BIOS, bootloader and parts of the kernel isn't the path of least resistance, IMO. 8) Sure, I know that *now*... :) If your customer's not _desperate_ for a super-low-cost solution, I'd suggest any of the Intel boards that offer EMP (most of these also offer BIOS-over-serial support, actually - as do a number of other vendors, IIRC AMI do this on some of their boards as well). They're using the Intel boards right now, but with a Sun background they really really want Open Firmware in an x86 box. I think they may end up getting Sun hardware anyway. Anyway, I'd set myself with a 6-month time-limit (while also managing other ports and customer work). This time has pretty much run out, but I'm actually making some small progress for a change and am caught between contracts, so what the heck... -- Parag Patel To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: Anybody working on FreeBSD BIOS?
Parag Patel wrote: On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:29:53 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: By now, based on the timeframe I've watched you through, I'd say that you should have a board that looks like a plain VGA framebuffer and has a keyboard cable hung out the back, and software up and running. Build cost at 100 off would probably be $100. Yeah, if I were a hardware guy. :) Besides there are other people taking this approach like PC Weasel. I think I saw someone selling this kind of boards. For something like $100 or $200. I can look in my archives for URL if you're interested. This is a problem, yes, but rewriting the BIOS, bootloader and parts of the kernel isn't the path of least resistance, IMO. 8) Sure, I know that *now*... :) Would not it be simpler to slightly patch the existing BIOS ? Like cut out the parts you don't want to execute, and then later your customized board would fill them up. Now, with only 3 major generic BIOSes (AMI, Phoenix, Award) (well, also Compaq but who would buy Compaq hardware anyway ?) it might be simpler to find where it calls the parts you don't like and use this experience on any boards using this kind of BIOS to replace them with NOPs, than to figure out chipset-dependent parts for each particular board. The only catch would be to get the new ROM checksum right. If your customer's not _desperate_ for a super-low-cost solution, I'd suggest any of the Intel boards that offer EMP (most of these also offer BIOS-over-serial support, actually - as do a number of other vendors, IIRC AMI do this on some of their boards as well). Phoenix in high-end machines (such as Intel Saber architecture) has option of serial console. They're using the Intel boards right now, but with a Sun background they really really want Open Firmware in an x86 box. I think they may end up getting Sun hardware anyway. Eh ? I don't quite get how Sun could be associated with Open Firmware. It always looked quite proprietary to me. (My personal experience with both Sun workstations and SPARC-based ICL was not particularly pleasant). -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
