[openfirmware] Using Open Firmware as a boot manager

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.openfirmware at telemetry.co.uk
Fri Mar 11 19:43:39 CET 2011


Mitch Bradley wrote:
> On 3/11/2011 3:01 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>> Given a copy of OFW booted from floppy on a PC, is there a comparatively
>> straightforward way of using it to boot an OS or loader from other block
>> devices or over the LAN, in the way that I'm used to on Sun kit?
> 
> Yes, you just say, for example,
> 
>    boot c:\boot\vmlinuz
> 
> That assumes that the support for the Linux file format has been 
> included in the OFW build.  It also assumes that your linux kernel is in 
> on the first partition of the primary IDE disk (the default target of 
> the "c" devalias) in a supported filesystem like FAT or ext2.
> 
> Booting Windows is not supported in the PC demonstration build, but is 
> possible with a fair amount of effort.  It requires ACPI and numerous 
> other accomodations for Windows' use of conventional BIOS.  We support 
> it on the One Laptop Per Child systems.

At present things I'm likely to want to boot are Linux and DOS, although 
I'm currently trying to evaluate ReactOS and Sanos so I can report back 
to another group of developers.

Bearing in mind that I've not really used Forth since doing my Masters 
[mumble] years ago, and that my use of Sun's implementation was mostly 
pretty trivial, I think I need an idiot's guide as to what can be done 
from the command line e.g. how to get aliases populated. At the very 
least so that I can ask questions intelligently.

I've really only got OFW working today, I tried (on some different 
systems) a few months ago but I suspect that the "Making a Prototype 
Floppy Image with Linux Commands" didn't work properly for me.

Now that I am able to run successfully on a PC, is there a standard 
config that I can use which will allow me to dump boot sectors etc. on 
BIOS-supported discs (i.e. preferably both IDE and SCSI)?

>> I'm hoping to eventually put it on some ARM-based development boards as
>> an interactive layer before they boot Linux (etc.) from disc.
> 
> My current work at One Laptop Per Child is ARM-based, so the OFW ARM 
> port is being actively maintained and enhanced.  I have versions that 
> you can load from uboot and others that run directly with no underlying 
> firmware.  The latter, of course, requires that you take responsibility 
> for the low-level issues of memory controller and DRAM initialization.
> 
> If you are a consumer of the board, then it's probably better to use 
> whatever firmware is already there as the initial loader, using OFW as 
> the boot manager as you say.  If you are developing your own hardware, 
> it starts to make sense to use OFW from the ground up.
> 
> Feel free to contact me directly if you need additional guidance.  At 
> this point I'm more interested in the ARM version than the x86 version, 
> so the sooner you get onto ARM, the more help I'll be able to offer.

Bear in mind that I'm doing this on spec, nobody's paying us for it and 
I'm really just trying to "grease the wheels" for some other internal 
projects. However I'd like to thing that once I'm up to speed I might be 
able to contribute usefully in some small way.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]



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