Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread Daniel C. Sobral
Parag Patel wrote: It can't, without shitloads of drivers. :) ("I asked you not to tell me that, Ninety-Nine!") A new loader would need to be written that would have a way to talk to whatever firmware is in the box, Open Firmware, LinuxBIOS, etc. (Assuming that the firmware has a

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread Parag Patel
On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 07:06:36 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: And, in the process, they are teaching the firmware about Ext2FS, Ext3FS, RheiserFS, (in our case) ffs, vinum, etc, so it can find the kernel in whatever place it is, or resorting to some sort of bootfs (though any software RAID would

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread Ronald G Minnich
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Parag Patel wrote: It's fairly simple, other than dealing with the various motherboard/chipset vagaries. So far those vagaries are not much code, something like 200 lines tops. It's possible to make a complete BIOS based on Linux that in turn loads and boots another

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread Daniel C. Sobral
Parag Patel wrote: Well, it's more of a matter of putting the kernel itself into the boot ROM with some small assembly/C code to turn on DRAM and an ungzipper to load and run it. It's fairly simple, other than dealing with the various motherboard/chipset vagaries. Ah, yes, I forgot about

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread John Baldwin
On 18-Jun-00 Parag Patel wrote: On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:35:51 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS recognizes. It has also been enhanced with PXE knowledge, so he can load from that to. My mistake, as Ron pointed

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread John Baldwin
On 19-Jun-00 Coleman Kane wrote: If you start out with a board based on a reference design, say the Intel SE440BX, you already have access to all this info. Most chipset vendors have info on this sort of thing up on their webpage, I know intel is really good about this sort of thing (though

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-19 Thread Coleman Kane
I never said it would be easy, I simply was stating that the reference designs tend to stick to documented specifications, typically. Of course, writing a BIOS is hard enough. John Baldwin had the audacity to say: On 19-Jun-00 Coleman Kane wrote: If you start out with a board based on a

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Parag Patel
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:35:51 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS recognizes. It has also been enhanced with PXE knowledge, so he can load from that to. My mistake, as Ron pointed out, since loader uses the BIOS

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Mike Smith
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:35:51 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS recognizes. It has also been enhanced with PXE knowledge, so he can load from that to. My mistake, as Ron pointed out, since loader uses the

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Coleman Kane
If you start out with a board based on a reference design, say the Intel SE440BX, you already have access to all this info. Most chipset vendors have info on this sort of thing up on their webpage, I know intel is really good about this sort of thing (though I am not so sure about the

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Warner Losh
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Daniel C. Sobral" writes: : If your BIOS project recognizes the flash card as a disk, accessible : with normal BIOS functions, then loader can work as is (minus whatever : you need modified). If not, it can be changed to understand whatever you : have to access the

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Daniel C. Sobral
Parag Patel wrote: On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:35:51 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS recognizes. It has also been enhanced with PXE knowledge, so he can load from that to. My mistake, as Ron pointed out,

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Parag Patel
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 13:49:36 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Err... how is a loader that doesn't use BIOS going to access the hard disk? I truly hope the answer is not to the effect of requiring shitloads of drivers. It can't, without shitloads of drivers. :) ("I asked you not to tell me

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-18 Thread Mike Smith
My mistake, as Ron pointed out, since loader uses the BIOS services, it can't run when there is no BIOS. Now if someone writes a loader that doesn't use a BIOS... Err... how is a loader that doesn't use BIOS going to access the hard disk? I truly hope the answer is not to the effect of

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-17 Thread David Greenman
So, I repeat: easily done, not acceptable to freebsd core. As has been mentioned by several people already, 'freebsd core' hasn't discussed this as a group and hasn't made any declaration of acceptabilty. That said, I'll say (as a core member, but representing only myself) that I think

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Jordan K. Hubbard
So, I repeat: easily done, not acceptable to freebsd core. Erm, hello? I really don't understand this message at all, Ron. As far as I know, FreeBSD core has expressed NO opinion on this issue whatsoever and it's therefore highly unfair of you to state that we: a) Even have a firm

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
The key is that freebsd may need to change a few things to make it bootable from cold hardware. I don't think this is for sure, but it may happen. I hope the team is receptive to such changes ... ie. "LinuxBIOS won't initialise the system correctly, so you'd better clean up after it"? How

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Fred Clift
We really were hoping we'd get some help from a motherboard vendor but that just hasn't been the case. No-one seems interested in the relatively low quantities of boards we'd move. Too bad we're already a big customer of these boards -- We'd love to have this kind of information about

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Ronald G Minnich
sorry, jordan. my bad. Anyway we're going to try a kernel next week that parag sent me. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Ronald G Minnich
(paul asks a good microcode question). I can't answer it yet. Here's my take on this: we're going to do a proof of concept of this idea. We now have three partners: SiS, Compaq, and Dell. Long-term goal is to get industry to pick it up. This is a means to an end. I don't want to be Mr. LinuxBIOS

RE: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Sean Jensen_Grey
[not on list] Regarding the freebsd bios and availablity of firmware you should check out http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/index.htm The sample implementation uses a FBSD core and provides a tcp/ip stack ftp client and server python interpreter read

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Daniel C. Sobral
Ronald G Minnich wrote: my bad. Anyway we're going to try a kernel next week that parag sent me. Mmmm. I saw no comments on my loader question. Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS recognizes. It has also been enhanced with PXE knowledge, so he

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-16 Thread Parag Patel
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:35:51 +0900, "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: Ronald G Minnich wrote: my bad. Anyway we're going to try a kernel next week that parag sent me. Mmmm. I saw no comments on my loader question. Loader(8) runs using BIOS services, and loads the kernel from any drive that BIOS

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Steven E. Ames
I'm confused. Acceptable to freebsd core isn't really the issue here. FreeBSD is a volunteer project. If you do the work and submit the code then 'core' has the option of deciding not to include it but if its useful people will use it anyway regardless if its 'Official' or not. If enough people

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ronald G Minnich writes: So, I repeat: easily done, not acceptable to freebsd core. Uhm, Ron, I have not seen freebsd core take a stand on this, and I'm a core team member, so I'm pretty sure they havn't. I also doubt that they ever would do so. Remember:

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Jack Rusher
Ronald G Minnich wrote: So, I repeat: easily done, not acceptable to freebsd core. If you can easily do it, why aren't you? I had thought someone was actively working on this (because it is SO obviously useful to have fast reboots in an HA environment). It's kind of a shame. Sure is.

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Mike Smith
So, I repeat: easily done, not acceptable to freebsd core. And again I tell you, no. Quite acceptable, not easily done. If someone does it, we'll happily play along. I don't understand why you don't understand this. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Ronald G Minnich
here's what we can. Somebody send a kernel for an L440GX+ that has pretty minimal stuff. I'd prefer it to have IDE, no networking, no SCSI, i.e. a pretty small thing. I'll try to use it as the payload for linuxbios and see if it boots. The key is that freebsd may need to change a few things to

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Mike Smith
here's what we can. Somebody send a kernel for an L440GX+ that has pretty minimal stuff. I'd prefer it to have IDE, no networking, no SCSI, i.e. a pretty small thing. I'll try to use it as the payload for linuxbios and see if it boots. GENERIC should work, presuming that the hardware's

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Parag Patel
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:37:51 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: ie. "LinuxBIOS won't initialise the system correctly, so you'd better clean up after it"? More like it ain't complete and is intended to boot Linux, so anything that Linux initializes but FBSD doesn't is probably SOL. :) I'm building a

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Mike Smith
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:37:51 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: ie. "LinuxBIOS won't initialise the system correctly, so you'd better clean up after it"? More like it ain't complete and is intended to boot Linux, so anything that Linux initializes but FBSD doesn't is probably SOL. :) 8) Actually,

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Parag Patel
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:49:23 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: 8) Actually, the things that really bother me are eg. interrupt routing and the ACPI GPIO bits, since the former is board-specific and you *must* know about it to set PCI up, and the latter is often necessary to do important things like, eg.

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Mike Smith
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:49:23 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: 8) Actually, the things that really bother me are eg. interrupt routing and the ACPI GPIO bits, since the former is board-specific and you *must* know about it to set PCI up, and the latter is often necessary to do important things like,

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Parag Patel
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:24:28 PDT, Mike Smith wrote: Uh. You're kidding me, right? Well, maybe a little. The L440GX+ board is well-documented with a nice diagram documenting the IRQ swizzle. The SuperMicro board isn't, so I'm probably screwed there. I think it is possible to probe it by

Re: freebsd bios.

2000-06-15 Thread Daniel C. Sobral
Ronald G Minnich wrote: here's what we can. Somebody send a kernel for an L440GX+ that has pretty minimal stuff. I'd prefer it to have IDE, no networking, no SCSI, i.e. a pretty small thing. I'll try to use it as the payload for linuxbios and see if it boots. I'm cc'ing Mike here so he can