Slashdot Mirror
Linux BIOS
An anonymous reader pointed us to the Linux Bios Project
which (surprise) is aiming to make a Linux Kernel BIOS. Its got numerous bugs, but some boards are booting. Interesting stuff, and has the potential to dramatically reduce boot time.
The real benefit is not necessarily to reduce the boot time to Linux - it's to enable greater functionality in the bootloader that would bootstrap the real Linux installation. Imagine being able to netboot on any card without having to flash a NIC EEPROM! You could also boot from Zip, CD-ROW, DVD or a number of other things. Imagine having a password-protected root prompt available at boot...
The possibilities are endless. I hope this one takes off.
æeee!
Well as much as I hate the time that it takes to boot, I can't remember the last time that I had to.
Fast booting: This is the point I best noted. Just think being able to replace all major A/V equipment in your house with linux boxes. Once they boot as fast as normal equiptment and we can already have them mount a ro filesystem for quick shutdown, my god it will be beautiful. I can't wait to be able to telnet to any A/V in my house. Use TCP/IP to create a electorinic system which can talk to each other. I.E. when my computer starts playing a CD or mp3 automatically mute my TV and turn on CC.
I can hardly wait.
Again, this project is booting Linux right now and is in active development by a paid staff. It's just gonna get better. :}
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Imagine having even the boot block and swap partition encrypted.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Quite simply: The OS loads without the normal 'POST' routine present on a standard PC.
In detail: When your PC starts up, the very first thing it does is go to the ROM (or PROM, or EEPROM, or FlashROM...) for the BIOS, and run the Power On Self Test. This is the routine that tests the processor(s) and memory, then initializes the PCI bus, initializes your IDE bus, and runs any Option ROMs on any add-in cards. On my home computer, this process (with memory test DISabled) takes about 2 minutes. (Yes, I have lots of OpROMs.) Unfortunately, most modern OSes (Linux included) do not use the BIOS. They access hardware directly, without ever speaking to the BIOS. So, once the BIOS has done it's job, your OS loads, and pushes the BIOS out of the way.
What Linux BIOS does: It completely does away with your old BIOS and goes immediately to the OS (Linux.) This means no POST, no PCI initialization, no OpROM scan. Because Linux doesn't talk to the BIOS anyway, it isn't needed. Now, the difficulty lies in the fact that you have this miniscule space (1MB on an Intel L440GX+) to hold the system. Plus, they are having difficulties getting some of the onboard hardware to function properly. (Linux DOES like to have the PCI bus initialized for it beforehand, which isn't happening with the old BIOS gone.)
Some of the benefits include:
Hopefully this gives you a little more info on why this is much better than just being able to skip the memory test... ;-)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Not really. The Sun (EE)PROM monitor is actually a fully capable FORTH environment, and I saw some pretty cool hacks for it floating around inside Sun (customers are obviously discouraged from hacking the monitor, but at least it's possible on a Sun, unlike most of their competition. This sort of thing is most often used to "fix" the IDPROM/hostid code that plays havoc with old licensed software on new hardware.)
The Sun monitor has even been codified as an IEEE standard, so anyone should be able to implement and use it.
This is damn cool, though. The implications for net-booting embedded devices alone are staggering. This sure beats flashing boot code into the NIC before you can boot, or living in the PXE straightjacket. (We'll know these guys have cojones when this BIOS inludes support for laptop functions like PCCard, ACPI suspend/resume, and hot-docking. These are *really* ugly areas, but breaking DOS compatibility makes things much easier.)
BTW: Microsoft's plan, too, is for the BIOS to go away and be replaced by some simple address tables telling where things are - I think the "legacy-free" PCs (no ISA, serial, or parallel, among other things) may have this sort of BIOS already. This is a good time fo the OpenSource crowd to bend Intel's ear and make sure that Microsoft doesn't dictate NG BIOS standards to the detriment of everyone else. (They enforce compliance with their plans through substantial OS "discounts" for PC9x/WHQL standards compliance, so they're not really optional for the OEMs that need the Windows OS.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Seriously, this BIOS stuff has got to go. Nobody uses 16-bit operating systems anymore; why are we still booting 32-bit (and soon 64-bit) operating systems using a 16-bit BIOS?
... but in reality, nobody uses any of it anymore, except the little bit required to chain-load into a 32-bit OS.
Non-PC platforms all have nice, simple ROM Monitors with simple, straightforward methods of loading the operating system kernel and then getting out of the way. On the PC, we have this gargantuan pseudo-OS that carries all sorts of legacy crud with it to support MS-DOS
This is one of those things that make the PC a 'fundamentally broken' architecture. Until things like this get changed, there will always be a delineation between PC's and 'real computers'.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
At Rebel.com, we've had this kind of bios in the NetWinder since day 1. The original idea belongs to nettwerk (who's at VA now). The idea was that we wanted the NetWinder to be able to boot from: disk, zip drive, tftp, nfs or parallel-port-cdrom. The kernel knows how to do all that, so why not make a bios out of the kernel. PatB
on SourceForge.
It's still crude (we're working on it)- but it is booting Linux _right_ _now_ on SiS530 chipsets.