Re: grub-dumpbios

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 03:57:17AM +0800, Bean wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Perhaps we could incorporate them in grub-update/grub-install, I guess
> there should be no harm adding two files in /boot/grub.

Please don't.  This is really corner case;  I at least wouldn't want GRUB
to install non-free blobs in /boot/grub automagically.

(Those blobs were already in the hardware, so GRUB is not responsible for
them, but still...)

Is this use case documented somewhere (e.g. in the wiki)?  Then users who
need it can learn about the procedure from the same place.  Also ...

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 10:28:52PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> As a side note: On many machines dumping the VGA option rom like that
> does not produce good option rom images. Many option roms are
> self-modifying and the above method only dumps the modified variants of
> the ROMs that are normally not good for "POSTing" a graphics card
> anymore. They're still good for other purposes though I guess.

... as Stefan points out (thanks Stefan) this may not be so
straightforwarded.  I don't think this kind of tweaking is suitable
for a setup that "Joe user" will get by default.

Btw, if the video rom can be obtained directly from memory, why doesn't
GRUB read it in runtime instead?

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."