In-Depth Look At LinuxBIOS 284
DrSkwid writes "With PhoenixBIOS reading your email because of such inordinate boot up times for Windows and other OSs, it was remarked in #plan9 about our 5s boot times using LinuxBIOS. My friend f2f pasted an article from Linux Journal which looks at the basic structure of LinuxBIOS, the origins of LinuxBIOS and how it evolved to its current state. It also covers the platforms supported and the lessons they have learned about trying to marry a GPL project to some of the lowest-level, most heavily guarded secrets that vendors possess."
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
On the bright side (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:On the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
And now they are low quality? (Score:2)
Re:And now they are low quality? (Score:2)
Re:And now they are low quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And now they are low quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
The feature set of LinuxBIOS is really neat and it would be great if these features were universal.
As far as the actuall "quality" of existing BIOS's, I think they are pretty good. Sure, there's been bugs, but usually minor and almost always fixed asap. The major motherboard manufacturers make most of their money on these
Re:And now they are low quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
oh...wait....
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
Already tried...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Already tried...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Informative)
Windows is not going to run on LinuxBIOS and Linux isn't going to run on Phoenix/MS BIOS.
While it's all well and good for the majority of us it's not good for the consumer.
Re:Already tried...? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.linuxbios.org/news/index.h
Re:Already tried...? (Score:2)
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'll never buy any DRM-based media (movies, music, cable TV, etc.), so I don't ever intend to have DRM-enabled hardware. So far, games are about the only reason I have to continue running Windows, and if the games of the future all require DR
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, "optional." The way it (the thing they used to call Palladium, I don't remember what it's called now) works is: there's write-once storage in a crypto processor on the motherboard and as the machine boots each software component (BIOS, kernel, application) writes a crypto-secure signature to it. Applications can read this string of signatures. Visiting a bank web-site (or music shop or ticketmaster or...) your machine would be required to presen
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. DRM chip is first thing to run on computer (before regular BIOS).
2. DRM calculates hash of BIOS, stores in secure memory.
3. BIOS runs.
4. BIOS calculates hash of bootloader, stores in secure memroy.
5. Bootloader runs.
6. Bootloader calculates hash of OS kernel, stores in secure memory.
7. And so on with the OS and its essential components.
Your DRM chip will have a private key burned into it, whose public key will be publicly known. The privat
Re:Already tried...? (Score:4, Insightful)
'our code is secure' ; 'Oh wait you want us to show our competitors! Nooo it's a risk to national security'.
Why would we not want to be subjected to all these wonderful qualities without the wait to get into windows?
"Get everything listed and MORE in less than 20 seconds!"
Re:Already tried...? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what Microsoft has ALREADY done, through pressure on Phoenix BIOS [slashdot.org] (submitted by yours truly) and on AMI BIOS [slashdot.org] (and probably every other BIOS maker), has far more sinister overtones.
The purpose of the new Microsoft-enabled BIOSes is to enable a new kind of "trusted" software and files that ARE UNUSABLE if the owner of the machine alters any of the "protected" elements of his computer.
Lets say you write some sort of upgrade for your computer, or you don't like something about how your computer runs and you want to change it (or someone else write such code and you want to install it). Code that changes the BIOS. What the new Trust system does is detect that you changed your computer and any "secure" software and data are unreadable. The music you downloaded will be unusable. The image processing software you had installed can no longer run. The spreadsheet you just bought can not install. Your favorite game can not connect to the server. The new "secure" e-mail Microsoft is advertizing will be unreadable.
But here's the REALLY scary part. Another slashdot story reported Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router. [slashdot.org] What the story missed was the fact that these new Cisco routers are based on Trusted Computing. That don't actually do anything to block viruses. What they can do is use Trusted Computing to verify that you have specific software installed, such as approved anti-virus software and an approved firewall. The way they "fight viruses" is by refusing to permit you an internet connection unless it verifies you are compliant. Well, if you changed your BIOS at all, or if you changed anything else about your computer, then the Trust chip in your computer reports a "failed" response. The router cannot verify that the approved anti-virus software and/or firewall are installed. You are therefore DENIED an internet connection.
The president's Cyber Security advisor gave a speech at an industry conference and he called on ISP's to install these routers and in effect to impose Trusted Computing compliance onto all of their customers as part of the terms of service for internet access.
If you try to change or control your system in any way then none of the new software will run, none of the new files will be readable, and ultimately you may be denied internet access. In effect you would no longer own your computer.
There is only one thing wrong with Trusted Computing - you are FORBIDDEN to know your own key that is secreted inside the Trust chip. When you don't know your own key then other people can turn your computer against you and lock you in or lock you out of anything. If you DID know this key you would be in full control of your computer.
When it comes to Trusted Computing simply demand to know your key. If they refuse to let you know your own key then tell them to go to hell.
-
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and this will be the time when all of us geeks will dig out good ole Fidonet Software and start rebuilding our own infrastructure.
But right now I have a valid contract with my provider, which does not require me to run some specific hardware an
Re:Already tried...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, you'd be perfectly free to do so. However you would be locked out of the real internet. Your new "freenet" would not have access to any of the millions of existing websites. You would not have access to anyone on the real internet. You would not be able to run any of teh new software. You would not be able to use any of the new files. You would be locked out of everything. It would be you and two friends on a little LAN with access to nothing else.
customers w
A bootloader? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't that a bootloader? Is it special because it is burned into the ROM?
Re:A bootloader? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A bootloader? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A bootloader? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A bootloader? (Score:5, Informative)
How it typically works is you develop a kernel with a small foot print. The LinuxBIOS guys are really sane about things, there is a few lines of assembly which is just about enough code to start running C code. After that the gist of it is C with some assembly macros. There isn't anything too complex, we're talking about outp mostly. There isn't anything too secret here, it's just that booting a PC is not documented really well. Some BIOS vendors have software that does runtime function with system managment interrupts. DRM will be something like that. Supposedly and there have been discussions about it on the LinuxBIOS list, Phoenix and company do some hardware error checking and such and that's why they are so slow but some of the LinuxBIOS folks think that they don't do that and that the code is so complex and has so much legacy that it does a bunch of extra crap that it doesn't need to.
That code does enough to turn on memory, it may do some checking now, when I looked at it last there wasn't a ton of integrity checking code. Light up a few other components, like VGA. Then copy a kernel from flash in to memory (think of it as a slightly tweaked bzImage) At that point you can pretty much jump to the start of the kernel and execute it. The kernel doesn't use BIOS for most device IO so it knows how to spin up drives and light up the rest of the hardware.
Now how we did it and understood the goal of LinuxBIOS to be was we had an initrd that the kernel from flash would load and execute. Said initrd would look at the drives, look at some other variables, authenticate the system, possibly do a fsck on the disks if needed and then locate a kernel on the disk. After locating that kernel it would use kexec, now called fastboot, and replace the kernel in memory. The idea was that we could upgrade kernels on disks without changing flash.
It works very well and has been incredibly reliable. We can get in to kernel space in a few seconds. Subsequently, if it's a settop box type device, it could download a brain from cable or satellite. It could rebuild itself if needed. You could have diagnostic code in there for manufacturing, etc, whatever you want. Pretty much only limited by flash size and memory.
I know that they now and do other things like boot windows and such, at which point LinuxBIOS is potentially a serious threat to Phoenix and company, the BIOS is an expensive piece of the computer.
I've been toying around with some linuxbios type projects. Since disk space is so insanely cheap and disks are so big anymore, you could set aside a backup partition, easily do a really quick backup daily and then weekly do a backup of that to long term media from "BIOS land" regardless of the operating system. Or you could have something like snapshots of your system, maybe a clean install, a configured system, a backup, a different OS or something like that and then all from "BIOS Space" pick them at boot time and have it restore them. Something like that, I have always wanted backup support at the BIOS level.
Motherboard support (Score:5, Insightful)
Will this have any chance of being taken up by a motherboard manuafacturer by default or is this a aftermarket project ? in which case without being installed by a manufacturer no-one is going to even contemplate wiping their "working" bios for an unknown 3rd party of no significant benefit to them
boot time of no benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:boot time of no benefit? (Score:2)
Hope you meant "decreased". Ontopic, one useful place I could see LinuxBIOS going would be custom embedded boards. Of course, they probably have that in a FAQ somewhere.
Re:boot time of no benefit? (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft could sue for prior art.
What? You meant to write "decreased?" Nevermind.
Re:boot time of no benefit? (Score:2)
I guarantee you'll have increased boot times, measured in godawful long minutes.
Re:Motherboard support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Motherboard support (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure the current license fee for a bios... but this would be of some great benifit to the lowest bid type computer makers like e-machines. I could also see someone re-branding other motherboards purchaced in bulk, like we see with PC chips motherboards, and saving money using a free-bios. Not like I haven't seen pirated
Re:Motherboard support (Score:3, Interesting)
I was really surprised/disappointed to see that Gigabyte motherboards weren't being actively tested. You would think their DualBios would be perfect for a project like this because you would have a rescue image
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Clustering (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clustering (Score:5, Insightful)
Great point. This is functionality sorely missed in the vast majority of x86 systems for everyone that needs to run headless servers.
The Remote Serial Console HOWTO [tldp.org] is a superb document, but following it only provides you with a system administrable via serial console once the bootloader (LILO, Grub) has been initialised. This means that everything before the bootloader is not accessible via serial console.
Having to install a video card and attach a monitor and keyboard to box in order to modify BIOS settings is major pain in the arse.
Re:Clustering (Score:2)
I've not looked much into LinuxBIOS as of yet asi
Re:Clustering (Score:5, Informative)
It initializes the necessary hardware and then loads any "payload." The payload can be anything--A kernel image if you have enough space on your flash part, a bootloader [te.to] to boot from over a network or local disk, etc.
Currently the Lightning cluster (Ranked at #6 @ top500.org) uses LinuxBIOS to load a bootloader (Etherboot or FILO, I forget which) which then loads a kernel and BProc [sourceforge.net]. No spinning hard disk, no CD-ROM, just an added solid state flash device on the IDE bus containing a bproc-patched kernel with a driver for the interconnect and bpslave. The rest of the operating system for slave nodes, which is only a few kilobytes, is pulled down over the network (Not necessarily ethernet) and loaded into RAM.
>> How are kernel updates done if it is the latter.
Since all the hardware is same for a cluster like Lightning, a kernel update can be done pretty easily with the bpcp (BProc copy) command if you have a new kernel sitting on the master node. I haven't used it in a while, but I think the command goes something like: bpcp vmlinuz 0-N:/boot/vmlinuz, where N is the last node. The syntax is very similar to RSH/SSH, but you can specify as many nodes as you want so you don't need any shell scripts to count up for you. I guess you might also need to tell bpsh to mount a boot partition, depending on how you have it set up.
If you have your kernel in the BIOS, then you have to rebuild and reflash. With the magic of BProc, you don't even need to put the BIOS flashing utility (See their flash_and_burn utility) on the slave node. Just run bpsh 0-N flash_rom newbios.rom. LinuxBIOS even provides fallback functionality so if something goes horribly wrong during this process or the new image doesn't work it can automatically load an old image that does work.
These are just a few of many possible configurations, of course. There are no strict guidelines as to how a LinuxBIOS system must be used. It's extremely flexable, which is one of its main appeals.
Re:Clustering (Score:4, Interesting)
You can do this now. I have multiple machines booting over the network, none of which have any local storage whatsoever. Just use a PXE based bootloader, or a motherboard with a BIOS you can flash and you can boot the kernel over the net and NFS-mount root.
It's great for tying a media box to a raid array without having all those pesky hard drives near your TV.
Re:Clustering (Score:2)
or try doing that in an embedded part of an airplane which needs to guarantee that in the event of an error it will come back to initial 'safe' state in a certain amount of ( 1) seconds (well, sometimes it just keeps rebooting in the 'safe' state but that happens even without linuxbios to help it).
remember, linuxbios solves much more, and general, problems than having a
Heres a picture (Score:5, Funny)
Heres a picture of linuxbios:
0001001010001000000100101001001000100100100100101
0010101001001000100100000100100101000100100100100
1001000100100100010000001001000100010000100110010
0101001001000100100100100101100100010000001010101
1000100100000100100000100101010010010010001001001
Re:Heres a picture (Score:2, Informative)
A real picture of LinuxBIOS:
0100110001101001011011100111010101111
Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this? (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't. Ok, that's unnecessarily harsh, but as it stands right now LinuxBIOS is primarily for people who are between very and highly technically inclined... Kind of like linux was shortly after it's release. That's why their website "SUCKS," because this isn't yet ready for the KDE crowd. You'd have to be comfortable finding the status of your motherboard [linuxbios.org], downloading and compiling the appropriate files, reflashing your onboard FlashROM, and other nasty, dirty things. I wouldn't consider myself qualified to get their best documented system up and running unless I was between jobs, and even then I consider it iffy.
Linux BIOS as it stands is useful for a few specific things: Building clusters and building robots. Any embedded system running on linux on a traditional motherboard can be sped up significantly by using Linux BIOS. But it does require quite a bit of work and knowledge to get it running... If you want a computer pre-flashed with LinuxBIOS, you can purchase one [linuxbios.org] off the shelf, but I would be hesitant to try and build one without a lot of time and / or skill.
It isn't that the LinuxBIOS people don't want that kind of end-user friendliness, it's just that the project is still in the mode of getting things working at all, let alone in an easy fashion.
Secondly, as you might have figured out, it is not a drop-in BIOS replacement. Your computer enters the boot phase and exists the other side with Linux running. You'll not get Windows to run directly on that, and I'd be surprised if it ran virtually (as the BIOS windows is expecting doesn't exist). If anyone here has experience running Windows on a LinuxBIOS, please let us know.
None of this is to say that the goals of the project are bad. Imagine being able to boot to command line in 3 seconds! You could start an ssh session before your monitor was done de-gaussing. Attach a 4 line LED display to one of these motherboards, and you would have a great tool for debugging network problems. Or just speed things up significantly, and spend more time doing what you are supposed to be doing, with the added bonus of being able to shut down your computer when you are done (gasp!). It just needs a lot more work, and a lot of developer support. I'm glad to see it posted to Slashdot, as the exposure might net a few more eager helpers.
Come on! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come on! (Score:2)
LinuxBIOS does that initial loading.
Grub (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Grub (Score:5, Interesting)
Not _THE_ kernel, _A_ kernel (Score:3, Informative)
If things move to LinuxBIOS you won't be flashing every time a new kernel is released, you'll be installing kernels normally, and instead of GRUB the LinuxBIOS will handle 'bootloading'.
moving THE kernel into flash isn't practical, my kernels are typically about
Chipset Support (Score:2)
Fifty supported motherboards are in the source tree, but we have found that many motherboards are so similar that a LinuxBIOS for one motherboard can work on another. Companies build code for one motherboard, run it on another motherboard and do not always get around
It really is amazing... (Score:5, Interesting)
If some of you people had read the article, for example, you'd notice some important points being made, such as, "From what we can see, the two factors in our success were competition and the creation of a market. Competition gave us a wide variety of choices as to motherboard, chipset and CPU. Once there was a reasonable market, vendors were concerned about being left out."
I don't know about any of you, but I think the creation of an open source "market" is EXACTLY what has enabled the success of open source products like Linux in the first place.
It was also what enabled the success of the Wintel architecture, if you think about it. At the time the original IBM PC was released, it was virtually a foreign idea to IBM--many people at the time were asking the question, "how on EARTH could IBM possibly release a machine based on open specifications and parts with a straight face?" Let us not forget that at the time, IBM desperately needed to get ANY kind of microcomputer on the market ASAP, for fear that Apple and others might get firmly entrenched. Once that thinking took hold, IBM practically had no choice but to hope and pray that their Big Name would keep them at the forefront. As we know, companies like Compaq came along and proved them wrong, and the rest is history.
The point is, I wonder why things like chipsets are still so closely guarded secrets. Can you people imagine what the world would be like if Intel had made the x86 CPUs with a proprietary, closely-guarded SECRET ISA, that you could only program for if you signed an NDA? If Intel had done that, Linux probably wouldn't even exist!!
I sometimes have this feeling Microsoft would do ANYTHING to go back in history and try to get all the laws of our country re-written and the market changed so this kind of all-secret world I speak of could exist.
In the end, the markets for products, be it open OR closed, occur because someone created that market. I think it is high time someone created an "open source" chipset, myself. But that's just me. If you people want all things to be open, stop talking about it and complaining about closed-source, proprietary things, and DO SOMETHING about it.
Re:It really is amazing... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It really is amazing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that surprising really . . . I think that instead of open source "market" one might say open standard.
IBM's PC was an open standard and that's a large part of the reason wh
Re:It really is amazing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Woops! (Score:4, Funny)
What is the bios for? (Score:4, Insightful)
If we start pushing linux bios, would we be pushing linux as Microsloth pushes Windows?
Re:What is the bios for? (Score:2)
LinuxBIOS really isn't for everyone. It's not as hardware agnostic as a typical harddrive based bootloader is, simply because a bios chip has a tiny amount of eeprom (256k). While this is suffiecient for an optimized system (cluster node, web server, invariant hardware, etc), it's really not good for a home user who'd love to throw his/her new radeon in and not have to in
Re:What is the bios for? (Score:3, Informative)
The trick is finding a bootloader that doesn't depend on legacy BIOS services [te.to].
Does it allow console access via serial port? (Score:5, Insightful)
instead of hauling a monitor over to a machine that won't boot, they could remotely connect via a Portserver or similar. Much easier!
Re:Does it allow console access via serial port? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does it allow console access via serial port? (Score:2)
Thanks!
plug n play smp's (Score:3, Funny)
zogger
Re:plug n play smp's (Score:2)
Finally, an admission... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the most common phrases we heard from chip vendors in the first few years was "we'll never tell you that." "That" being CPU information, chipset information, motherboard information or any combination of the three. The designs for these three systems constitute highly guarded secrets. It seems amazing, even now, that vendors are able to let us build a GPLed BIOS that by its nature exposes some of these secrets.
How was it possible for us to get this type of information? Simple, businesses are not charities. If there is no business case for releasing this information to us, they do not do it. If, however, there is a business case, then it happens?sometimes with astonishing speed.
Read that last paragraph again. The hardware vendors basically say "that's a secret" whether it really is or not. Unless you pay them, or show them that they are losing money, they won't even bother deciding if it's really something that has to be kept secret.
Re:Finally, an admission... (Score:2)
Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to know is if it would be possible to overwrite a, say, Apple Power Macintosh beige OldWorld G3 with LinuxBIOS or OpenBIOS and thus get to use x86 SCSI and VGA adapters.
Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh? (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of PCI cards that do not have any firmware, work just fine on a ppc/linux setup to begin with, even when the cards do not have any support in MacOS or OSX.
I have a realtek ethernet card and a generic AMD usb card in my oldworld 603e machine already.
In addition, a lot of cards that do have firmware will work as long as you do not care about the device being available from boot. I have an older matrox card and an adaptac 2940UW in my machine.
Both work just fine as long as I don't need them until the linux kernel takes over. With proper kernel parameters, the matrox card is even my console, I just don't see anything until the kernel is booting. Ditto, I boot and load kernel from a 250MB narrow-scsi drive on the machines onboard scsi. My root partition is on an UW drive on the adaptec card.
Took a little bit of doing, but this 'grossly obsolete' machine is running just great after adding some 'somewhat obsolete' parts. With 256MB, a fast drive, and a card with decent X performance (the 10-year-old matrox)... It performs a heck of a lot better than it's 180Mhz would make you guess.
Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh? (Score:2)
The 2940U is quite different. It never had a PowerDomain version.
Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh? (Score:2)
Works on Matrox and 3dfx, but not ATi or nVidia.
And doesn't work on my Adaptec AHA-2940U.
Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh? (Score:2)
Accelerate Your Mac [xlr8yourmac.com] has more info.
For the end consumer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For the end consumer... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a list [linuxbios.org].
This isn't really aimed at Joe Linux, but that may change when DRM starts getting imbedded in the major BIOSes.
Re:For the end consumer... (Score:3, Informative)
A BIOS is for weens! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A BIOS is for weens! (Score:3, Funny)
Been there, done that, glad I don't have to any more!
Re:A BIOS is for weens! (Score:2)
Ah, the good old days.
Re:A BIOS is for weens! (Score:2)
Lovely simple machine. The ALGOL compiler was really good.
Re:A BIOS is for weens! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A BIOS is for weens! (Score:4, Funny)
No, we had to make do with a Velveeta box, an old Q-tip, and one of mom's buttons!
Handy tips... (Score:5, Informative)
Some motherboards have a dual BIOS or similar arrangement; however, there is not always a foolproof way to switch to your backup if the primary BIOS is hosed..
Keep these things in mind if you want to start playing with LinuxBIOS
Re:Handy tips... (Score:2)
Their hardware seems to be prone to shorting out, just look at how the text on their web page text keeps blinking on and off.
Boot Time... (Score:2)
Re:Boot Time... (Score:3, Informative)
At least, that's how I'd measure it.
linux bios faq (Score:2, Informative)
OpenFirmware (Score:5, Interesting)
As I see it, half the point of LinuxBIOS is to provide a fast, open-sourced BIOS for x86 machines. It gets extra cool points for being Linux.
But I have to ask, why not just use OpenFirmware? Or at least, give LinuxBIOS some of the features of OpenFirmware. As far as I know, there is no such thing as OpenFirmware for the x86. It's got lots of neat benefits, like booting your machine off of another one on your network, or debugging a non-bootable machine remotely. Serial console, anyone? It has other benefits as well, that I can't remember; my brain is shot for the week.
For those of you that haven't heard of OpenFirmware, it's basically the "BIOS" on Macs.
Re:OpenFirmware (Score:2)
Re:OpenFirmware (Score:2)
Re:OpenFirmware (Score:5, Informative)
LinuxBIOS to boot other OSs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LinuxBIOS to boot other OSs (Score:3, Informative)
This is a wonderful idea... yeah right. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see this exactly the way I see modern operating systems boot up. The BIOS goes to some place and reads 512 bytes. Those bytes load up a "real" bootloader. That bootloader loads up some darn thing, which loads up the kernel, which loads up a bunch of device drivers and other software, and after a minute of grinding the disk, you have a system waiting for input. Why all this fuss?
My idea, then, is that instead of having an operating system kernel on your hard drive, it and its bootloader should reside in a really friggen powerful BIOS chip. By powerful I mean that there should be a LOT of flash space and the BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor. The software is started immediately upon the powerup of the computer. The BIOS Flash then looks like the root partition; it is mounted just like the hard drives and other devices are. All device drivers are present in the kernel, anyway, and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load. Furthermore, all software that starts at startup has a complete image "frozen" in the BIOS Flash, and is copied directly into RAM during the initial stages of startup. Therefore, if you have X, and an entire desktop environment, the entire computer goes from OFF to running X and your desktop software, and whatever else you want for that matter, in almost no time at all. Your monitor would probably take longer to warm up then it would take for your desktop to be ready for input.
This sounds a lot like un-suspending a computer that is in suspend mode, and yes, in effect, it's just like that. You have your system running the way you want it to start up, then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash, and when you turn on the computer, the BIOS copies the image directly into RAM, with perhaps a few routines here and there that initialize hardware upon powerup, or set a few values throughout RAM, like time-sensitive things and whatnot... No matter how fast MS makes their OS load, it'll never come close to this kind of performance.
Take it a step further, and each user could have almost an entire operating system setup, as if the computer has multiple personalities from the bootloader up. The BIOS has some routine that lets you log in, and accordingly, selects the image that will get loaded. In this respect, you could completely power down the computer, and come back a week later, turn it on, and immediately it will return to where it was.
This will probably be the case in 10 years or so. (Hey, in the 90's we went from the 386 SX to the Pentium 3. Who knows what the hell will happen by 2015 or so.)
Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right. (Score:4, Informative)
You can do that today. Get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter and a CompactFlash device of the size of your choice. You probably think that's slower than putting it in the same Flash as the BIOS. Well, it's not. The BIOS Flash sits on most motherboards on the ISA bus, which is notoriously slow.
Remember, the BIOS is nothing more than a Flash device. And because it sits on a relatively slow interface, it really is not a great place to store large amounts of data.
BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor.
You misunderstand what the BIOS is. The BIOS is just a chunk of code, nothing more. It's not a microprocessor. The microprocessor is whatever Intel, AMD, Via etc. chip you have on the board. That's what executes the BIOS.
and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load
Again, this is something you can do today. You have to configure the Linux kernel to do that. Before modules people would do this a lot more often, but one of the downsides of Linux going 'big' is that most people don't know/understand how to strip their kernel from stuff they don't need, while on the other hand, features such as Plug and Play detection etc have increased the boot time dramatically.
then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash,
Remember that Flash write speed is very slow compared to a harddrive, no matter what bus it sits on. Even CompactFlash is much slower than even a slow harddrive. Imagine storing a snapshot on a fully loaded system with 1GB or RAM. That's a lot of stuff to write to anything.
Anyways, I know where you are coming from, but with all due respect, you don't really have the background to come up with a realistic system design.
Believe me, BIOS & OS coders _do_ come up with ideas like this all the time and I think that alternatives to the old (obsolete) BIOS will come up more and more. (hint: I am a BIOS coder that might be working on a skunkworks project
In the meantime, if you want a fast boot, do the following:
- use LinuxBIOS
- put your kernel on CompactFlash. CompactFlash is available almost immediately vs. the 3-5 sec spin-up time of a normal HDD.
- configure your kernel properly and link all drivers you need statically instead of using modules (as much as you can).
- As soon as the HDD is ready, you can mount your main filesystem on that.
eCos and Redboot? (Score:2)
I think I'm just a little unclear on the differences among bios/kernel loaders/boot loaders. I know that the linux kernel doesn't really use the BIOS (for the most part) when it discovers devices. As such, the BIOS is a moot point. How does this compare to embedded systems like Arm/XScale boards?
Can anyone clarify this for me/us?
u-boot is superior and much farther ahead (Score:3, Informative)
More information at the u-boot [sourceforge.net] homepage. The u-boot README [sourceforge.net] file lists all the architectures, supported platformas and options.
Credit goes to Wolfgang Denk, the father of the project.
Best wishes,
A firmware engineer
Re:How do I try it? (Score:3, Informative)
No athlon64 mobos are on the list, sorry.
Re:oh yeah? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0? (Score:3, Informative)
The processor can address 4GB using 32 address lines, and that defines an address space of 4GB.
Newer processors address 64GB using 4 extra address lines but they are yet another add-on that has to be enabled lateron by special software support.
Re:Non-Volatile RAM? (Score:3, Interesting)