ISA Option ROM booting capability

ISA Option ROM booting capability

[UrJiZ]

I thought that someone might like to test the ROM booting capability,
so I made a tarball of my grub2/romboot directory (stripped all
binaries). The file can be downloaded from
http://88.193.31.35:8080/urjaman/romboot.tar.gz (or if that server is
down then http://rapidshare.com/files/70800517/romboot.tar.gz.html ).
A short howto follows.

You will need:
- grub2 sources and all grub2 compilation requirements
- nasm
- romboot.tar.gz

For testing, the easiest way (for me atleast) is qemu. Bochs might work too.

first configure and build grub2 normally
then unpack the tarball to the grub2 folder, it will create a new
folder called romboot.
then:
cd romboot
<modify modules.lst if you like to>
<take a look at romgrub.asm, grub-mkrom (it's a shell script),
romchk.c if you like to>
./grub-mkrom
then you will (if all went ok) have core.img and romboot.bin in that
folder (for the first run it also compiles romchk)

Testing:
I've only tested using qemu and real hardware, so here it goes for qemu:
qemu -option-rom romgrub.bin <some file for a hard disk, even
/dev/null will work>
Be ready to press scroll lock when qemu comes up. (I've missed it a
few times...)

The real hardware part is (i think) too long to explain here, and it's
the same as with romos, so:
http://rayer.ic.cz/romos/romose.htm


-- 
urjaman

Re: ISA Option ROM booting capability

[Bean]

Hi,

On Nov 19, 2007 11:05 PM, UrJiZ <urjaman@gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought that someone might like to test the ROM booting capability,
> so I made a tarball of my grub2/romboot directory (stripped all
> binaries). The file can be downloaded from
> http://88.193.31.35:8080/urjaman/romboot.tar.gz (or if that server is
> down then http://rapidshare.com/files/70800517/romboot.tar.gz.html ).
> A short howto follows.
>
> You will need:
> - grub2 sources and all grub2 compilation requirements
> - nasm
> - romboot.tar.gz
>
> For testing, the easiest way (for me atleast) is qemu. Bochs might work too.
>
> first configure and build grub2 normally
> then unpack the tarball to the grub2 folder, it will create a new
> folder called romboot.
> then:
> cd romboot
> <modify modules.lst if you like to>
> <take a look at romgrub.asm, grub-mkrom (it's a shell script),
> romchk.c if you like to>
> ./grub-mkrom
> then you will (if all went ok) have core.img and romboot.bin in that
> folder (for the first run it also compiles romchk)
>
> Testing:
> I've only tested using qemu and real hardware, so here it goes for qemu:
> qemu -option-rom romgrub.bin <some file for a hard disk, even
> /dev/null will work>
> Be ready to press scroll lock when qemu comes up. (I've missed it a
> few times...)
>
> The real hardware part is (i think) too long to explain here, and it's
> the same as with romos, so:
> http://rayer.ic.cz/romos/romose.htm
>
>
> --
> urjaman
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>

I just test it, it does work, but here are some suggestion:

1, use gas syntax, it's not that much source, just convert it.
2, don't embed core.img, instead compile header seperately, and create
the rom image by catenating the header and core.img
3, Use romchk to zero-pad the rom to 64K, and fix the checksum. It can
be quite useful if it can also configure runtime variables like the
hotkey and timeout.

-- 
Bean

Re: ISA Option ROM booting capability

[UrJiZ]

Hi,

On Nov 20, 2007 9:14 AM, Bean <bean123ch@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,

> 1, use gas syntax, it's not that much source, just convert it.
> 2, don't embed core.img, instead compile header seperately, and create
> the rom image by catenating the header and core.img
> 3, Use romchk to zero-pad the rom to 64K, and fix the checksum. It can
> be quite useful if it can also configure runtime variables like the
> hotkey and timeout.
>

Here's some list on what i've done:
- converted the code to gas syntax... (I don't really get why, NASM is
so much better in bootloader-like things...)
- modified grub-mkrom to be able to compile it (dunno whether the
current cpp + as + ld is the correct way, but it works)
- added static offsets in image for the runtime variables...
- modified romchk to be able to modify 'em
- added grub-mkrom to be able to pass the variables to romchk (also
has --help now)
- added a tiny clean-binaries script ... it's just replacing "make
clean" for now.

And here's the new archive:
http://88.193.31.35:8080/urjaman/romboot2.tar.gz (or
http://rapidshare.com/files/72238464/romboot2.tar.gz.html ).

Any comments are welcomed, good or bad.

-- 
urjaman

Re: ISA Option ROM booting capability

[Robert Millan]

Hi,

Are you still interested in getting this merged?  If you are, please let
us know.  We'd need you to submit a patch to the list in that case
(external URLs are problematic).  Don't worry if it's not up-to-date,
for initial review it should be OK.

On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 09:10:29PM +0200, UrJiZ wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Nov 20, 2007 9:14 AM, Bean <bean123ch@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> 
> > 1, use gas syntax, it's not that much source, just convert it.
> > 2, don't embed core.img, instead compile header seperately, and create
> > the rom image by catenating the header and core.img
> > 3, Use romchk to zero-pad the rom to 64K, and fix the checksum. It can
> > be quite useful if it can also configure runtime variables like the
> > hotkey and timeout.
> >
> 
> Here's some list on what i've done:
> - converted the code to gas syntax... (I don't really get why, NASM is
> so much better in bootloader-like things...)
> - modified grub-mkrom to be able to compile it (dunno whether the
> current cpp + as + ld is the correct way, but it works)
> - added static offsets in image for the runtime variables...
> - modified romchk to be able to modify 'em
> - added grub-mkrom to be able to pass the variables to romchk (also
> has --help now)
> - added a tiny clean-binaries script ... it's just replacing "make
> clean" for now.
> 
> And here's the new archive:
> http://88.193.31.35:8080/urjaman/romboot2.tar.gz (or
> http://rapidshare.com/files/72238464/romboot2.tar.gz.html ).
> 
> Any comments are welcomed, good or bad.

-- 
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."