Fast/Quiet Boot

Fast/Quiet Boot

[the uni]

I've been testing the new Moblin distro from linux, and it boots
incredibly quickly (~7 secs to desktop in KVM)

One irritation is that the bios takes up roughly half of that time.
I've managed to throw in a few ifdefs into the bios/vgabios to
get the screen cleared and the prompts to go away so that the first
thing that you see after KVM is launched is an xfce desktop.

This is a vast improvement in my opinion, but obviously one that's not
always wanted/needed.

It makes sense to me that if a --boot or --kernel parameter is given,
that the "press f12 for boot menu..." should not be shown.
Moreover, I think it makes sense to show no bios messages at all if
--kernel is given. This improves boot time by ~3 secs
on my machine, meaning I get a moblin xfce desktop in ~4 secs.

So here's my

Re: Fast/Quiet Boot

[the uni]

Heavy finger, disregard last message...

I've been testing the new Moblin distro from linux, and it boots
incredibly quickly (~7 secs to desktop in KVM)

One irritation is that the bios takes up roughly half of that time.
I've managed to throw in a few ifdefs into the bios/vgabios to
get the screen cleared and the prompts to go away so that the first
thing that you see after KVM is launched is an xfce desktop.

This is a vast improvement in my opinion, but obviously one that's not
always wanted/needed.

It makes sense to me that if a --boot or --kernel parameter is given,
that the "press f12 for boot menu..." should not be shown.
Moreover, I think it makes sense to show no bios messages at all if
--kernel is given. This improves boot time by ~3 secs
on my machine, meaning I get a moblin xfce desktop in ~4 secs.

So here's my question: Is it posible to send a parameter to the bios?
I'd like to change the bios operation for the 2 parameters above, but
haven't found a way to do it.

Any help would be appreciated.
TheUni

Re: Fast/Quiet Boot

[Andre Przywara]

the uni wrote:
> Heavy finger, disregard last message...
> 
> I've been testing the new Moblin distro from linux, and it boots
> incredibly quickly (~7 secs to desktop in KVM)
> 
> One irritation is that the bios takes up roughly half of that time.
> I've managed to throw in a few ifdefs into the bios/vgabios to
> get the screen cleared and the prompts to go away so that the first
> thing that you see after KVM is launched is an xfce desktop.
> 
> This is a vast improvement in my opinion, but obviously one that's not
> always wanted/needed.
> 
> It makes sense to me that if a --boot or --kernel parameter is given,
> that the "press f12 for boot menu..." should not be shown.
> Moreover, I think it makes sense to show no bios messages at all if
> --kernel is given. This improves boot time by ~3 secs
> on my machine, meaning I get a moblin xfce desktop in ~4 secs.
> 
> So here's my question: Is it posible to send a parameter to the bios?
> I'd like to change the bios operation for the 2 parameters above, but
> haven't found a way to do it.
Are you looking for the firmware configuration interface?
Look at bios/rombios32.c for functions qemu_cfg_* and constants 
QEMU_CFG_* for the BIOS side of the game and qemu/hw/fw_cfg.[ch] for the 
QEMU interface side (functions here are prefixed with fw_cfg_). So 
define a new channel and send your data over. Be sure to consider 
qemu-devel if you want to send patches.

Hope that helps,
Andre.

-- 
Andre Przywara
AMD-Operating System Research Center (OSRC), Dresden, Germany
Tel: +49 351 277-4917
----to satisfy European Law for business letters:
Advanced Micro Devices GmbH
Karl-Hammerschmidt-Str. 34, 85609 Dornach b. Muenchen
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Jochen Polster; Thomas M. McCoy; Giuliano Meroni
Sitz: Dornach, Gemeinde Aschheim, Landkreis Muenchen
Registergericht Muenchen, HRB Nr. 43632

Re: Fast/Quiet Boot

[the uni]

I've managed to get some parameters passed to vgabios (by copying the
channel read code, exactly as Andre suggested, which worked
beautifully).

However, Not as much luck getting into rombios.c. Using the exact same
code that I shamefully ripped from rombios32.c, I get no response from
inb(QEMU_CFG_DATA_PORT) there.

Is there something simple that I'm missing?

Here's a quick capture of what I've been working with... A very
impressive showing from Intel. http://youtube.com/watch?v=471VrX_xpT8

Thanks for any insight.
TheUni