Coreboot at Your Service!
Listing 1. Configuration Process for libpayload
* * Libpayload Configuration * * Architecture Options * Multiboot header support (MULTIBOOT) [Y / n] * * Standard Libraries * Enable C library support (LIBC) [Y / n] Enable tinycurses support (TINYCURSES) [Y / n] * * Console Options * See output on the serial port console (SERIAL_CONSOLE) [Y / n] I/O base for the serial port (SERIAL_IOBASE) [0x3f8] Override the serial console baud rate (SERIAL_SET_SPEED) [N / y] Use plain ASCII characters for ACS (SERIAL_ACS_FALLBACK) [N / y /?] See output on a video console (VIDEO_CONSOLE) [Y / n] VGA video console driver (VGA_VIDEO_CONSOLE) [Y / n] Geode LX video console driver (GEODELX_VIDEO_CONSOLE) [N / y] Allow input from a PC keyboard (PC_KEYBOARD) [Y / n] English (US) keyboard layout (PC_KEYBOARD_LAYOUT_US) [Y / n] German keyboard layout (PC_KEYBOARD_LAYOUT_DE) [N / y] * * Drivers * Support for PCI devices (PCI) [Y / n] Support for reading / writing NVRAM bytes (NVRAM) [Y / n] Extended RTC ports are 0x74/0x75 (RTC_PORT_EXTENDED_VIA) [N / y /?] Support for PC speaker (SPEAKER) [Y / n] USB Support (USB) [N / y]
Once the configuration parameters are set, run make again to compile the library:
$ cd ../filo $ make
Now you can set the options for FILO. Again, simply press Enter for all the prompts and accept the defaults.
Listing 2. Configuration Process for FILO
* * FILO Configuration * * Interface Options * Use GRUB like interface (USE_GRUB) [Y / n /?] Command line prompt (PROMPT) [filo] GRUB menu.lst filename (MENULST_FILE) [hda3:/boot/grub/menu.lst] Timeout for loading menu.lst (MENULST_TIMEOUT) [0] Use MD5 passwords in menu.lst? (USE_MD5_PASSWORDS) [Y / n /?] * * Drivers * IDE DISK support (IDE_DISK) [Y / n /?] IDE disk poll delay (IDE_DISK_POLL_DELAY) [0] Extra delay for SATA (SLOW_SATA) [N / y /?] PCMCIA CF (Epia) support (PCMCIA_CF) [N / y /?] new USB Stack (USB_NEW_DISK) [Y / n /?] USB Stack (obsolete?) (USB_DISK) [N / y /?] NAND Flash support (FLASH_DISK) [N / y /?] PCI support (SUPPORT_PCI) [Y / n] Scan all PCI busses (PCI_BRUTE_SCAN) [N / y /?] Sound Support (SUPPORT_SOUND) [N / y] * * Filesystems * EXT2 filesystem (FSYS_EXT2FS) [Y / n] FAT (MSDOS) filesystem (FSYS_FAT) [Y / n] JFS (FSYS_JFS) [N / y] Minix filesystem (FSYS_MINIX) [N / y] ReiserFS (FSYS_REISERFS) [Y / n] XFS (FSYS_XFS) [N / y] ISO9660 filesystem (FSYS_ISO9660) [Y / n] El Torito bootable CDROMs (ELTORITO) [Y / n /?] Compressed RAM filesystem (CRAMFS) (FSYS_CRAMFS) [N / y] Squash filesystem (FSYS_SQUASHFS) [N / y] * * Loaders * Standard Linux Loader (LINUX_LOADER) [Y / n /?] Windows CE Loader (WINCE_LOADER) [N / y /?] Artec Loader (ARTEC_BOOT) [N / y /?] * * Debugging & Experimental * Enable experimental features (EXPERIMENTAL) [N / y /?] DEBUG_ALL (DEBUG_ALL) [N / y] DEBUG_ELFBOOT (DEBUG_ELFBOOT) [N / y] DEBUG_ELFNOTE (DEBUG_ELFNOTE) [N / y] DEBUG_SEGMENT (DEBUG_SEGMENT) [N / y] DEBUG_SYS_INFO (DEBUG_SYS_INFO) [N / y] DEBUG_BLOCKDEV (DEBUG_BLOCKDEV) [N / y] DEBUG_VFS (DEBUG_VFS) [N / y] DEBUG_FSYS_EXT2FS (DEBUG_FSYS_EXT2FS) [N / y] DEBUG_PCI (DEBUG_PCI) [N / y] DEBUG_LINUXLOAD (DEBUG_LINUXLOAD) [N / y] DEBUG_IDE (DEBUG_IDE) [N / y] DEBUG_ELTORITO (DEBUG_ELTORITO) [N / y] Developer Tools (DEVELOPER_TOOLS) [Y / n /?]
Obviously, not all of the above options actually are needed. For instance, you don't need XFS, JFS or Minix support if your system boots off an ext2/ext3 partition. Once you've gotten everything running, you can come back and switch off the options you don't need, which will reduce the size of the coreboot image.
Notice the following line near the top of Listing 2:
GRUB menu.lst filename (MENULST_FILE) [hda3:/boot/grub/menu.lst]
My test EPIA-M II system has OpenSUSE 11.0 installed and uses the GRUB bootloader. I chose to include GRUB's interface support inside FILO, and this is the place to specify the location of GRUB's menu file. If you don't plan to use the GRUB interface (for instance, if your Linux distribution uses LILO for booting), you need to specify the correct line to load the kernel and initrd, as shown in Listing 3.
Listing 3. If your distribution works with LILO, you can switch off the GRUB interface in FILO.
*
* FILO Configuration
*
* Interface Options
*
Use GRUB like interface (USE_GRUB) [Y / n /?] n
Autoboot a command line after timeout? (USE_AUTOBOOT) [Y / n]
Kernel filename and parameters (AUTOBOOT_FILE)
↪[hda1:/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 console=tty0
↪console=ttyS0, 115200]
Time in seconds before booting (AUTOBOOT_DELAY) [2]
After setting the FILO's configuration parameters, compile FILO by running make again. The compiled loader is placed here: filo/build/filo.elf.
At this point, you've prepared the payload. Now, you need to generate a coreboot image. First, let's take a look at the config file that is used during the coreboot build (Listing 4):
$ cd coreboot-v2/targets/via/epia-m $ vi Config.lb
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Comments
Some clarifications
Hi there,
@Anonymous: there's a list of supported hardware. Basically if your motherboard's components are already supported, the motherboard shouldn't be very hard to get working, but if this isn't the case, the needed work can be quite consistent.
@Boris: The v3 was dropped in favor of v2 and is now unmaintained (except for Via Epia targets). Many of v3's features were backported to v2, which still has much better hardware support than v3.
The coreboot wiki page is a good reading, and the people from the IRC channel or from the mailinglist are a great source of help also.
Thank you for the
Thank you for the article.
Could you try to boot the latest trunk version? I've tried to boot trunk svn revision 4974 but can't get even serial output from my epia-m.
Does it work on my box?
How the heck can I find out whether coreboot will work on my machine? I'm using Linux, of course.
superiotool don't recognize my super i/o