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Blurring The Line Between BIOS And OS
Jon Kincade writes "The Register has an article about Phoenix Technologies cME software that allows users on anything from servers to embedded systems to run diagnostics, browse the web and other things without having to boot into a full fledged OS. The primary use seems to be recovery from system crashes. Also, this may explain why the Phoenix browser was asked to change its name a few months ago."
Command line browsing at it's best!
;-)
Look out ASCII porn here come the BIOSonly users of the world
Posting as directed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Phoenix Technologies is hoping PC manufacturers will latch on to its newest software to help solve PC problems and improve data security.
Phoenix, which creates BIOS software for many of the largest PC manufacturers, branched out this week with the new CME, or Core Managed Environment, software suite.
Where the BIOS (basic input/output system) provides a bridge between a PC's operating system and its hardware, CME will create protected areas on a PC's hard drive that can host sensitive data or applications that alleviate common problems, allowing the computers to run even if the operating system is damaged, the company said.
Phoenix, which will sell the software directly to PC makers for an undisclosed price, becomes the latest in a series of hardware and software makers trying to make PCs easier to use and more secure.
Intel, Transmeta, Via Technologies and Microsoft have recently launched new security initiatives. IBM has also been offering special data recovery software and a security chip in its new PCs. Collectively, the companies are seeking to better protect sensitive data, owned by companies or individuals, against thieves.
Although the security offers--including Intel's "LaGrande" technology, Transmeta's newest Crusoe processor and Via's Padlock--are built into chips or, in the case of Microsoft's Palladium project, into the operating system, Phoenix's CME will reside in a protected area on a PC's hard drive.
CME applications are intended to protect and recover PC users' data and to help the PC itself repair damaged software or connect to the Internet to download updates, the company said in a statement.
Phoenix will also offer versions of CME for embedded devices, such as industrial equipment, consumer electronics and servers.
Basic Input Output System
If you can do more advance operation through "BIOS", then the "BIOS" is no longer BASIC.
Therefore, it should no longer be called BIOS (Basic IOS)
Call it Embedded Operating System (EmbOS).
Just a thought!
Now that computers aren't coming with floppy drives, there better be something that users can do crash recovery from if the machines won't boot from cd....
Personally I'd like the choice of recovery cds/floppies.
A bit like the offerngs here?
[This Sig contains on viruses]
But I thought BIOS stood for "Built-In Operating System". And everyone knows the web browser is a fundamental component of any OS, built-in or otherwise. I'd almost go so far as to say the two should be tied together.
As usual, this just seems to be a case of stuff origionally designed for big expensive systems coming down to lower levels. IBM servers tend to have this functionality, hell on our F50 at work you can dial in using a modem when the AIX OS isnt running, the bios/firmware will take care of you. The AlphaPC164 i was jsut given suprised me by having a almost full unixlike OS as its firmware (SRM).
This has happened with SCSI, raid, SMP etc so it doesnt suprise me to find a BIOS that does more than normal, and in many cases it is a bonus, depending on wether it does certain things. I use serial consoles a lot, and would love to have a better way to talk to the computer at a really low level, without resorting to expensive hardware.
"Resides in a protected area of the harddisk".
I think we all know what this means! Track 0 anyone? This could be interesting for TurboTax, and all the other horribly crippled applications forced on consumers nowadays.
Usually the two most critical items needed to help a problem system is file system access and then some basic editing tool. If this bios can come with
1 - your choice of file system driver (ntfs, ufs, whateverfs)
2 - a raw sector editor
3 - a simple text file editor
That would be a godsend. A tcp/ip stack with telnet/ftp would also be very useful, but I could live without that.
If they do it wrong, however, it might be a nightmare of DRM, spyware, and commercial apps sitting in weird disk partitions. That, we definitely don't need. I don't want my machine reporting to Phoenix every time I boot, for example.
I hope, however, that Phoenix will be cut out of the loop. Something like the Linux BIOS or OpenFirmware make a whole lot more sense to me as the basis for this.
I agree.
The whole point of a "Basic Input/Output System" is for, well, basic I/O. It was meant to be a thin layer between the OS and the hardware.
While I agree that the technology can be improved upon, I don't think this is the proper direction to take.
I much prefer the route that Gigabyte has taken with their DualBIOS. If there is serious enough trouble with the OS, just boot to a CD with recovery tools on it. If there's a problem in the BIOS, you now have a spare. I don't see the necessity of a TCP/IP stack in the BIOS.
My $0.02.
-azmaveth
This nifty thing has been available on the Alpha machines for 10 years or so.
Help fight continental drift.
But perhaps you can still log into Slashdot and engage in some karma whoring.
Because we need a standard way to interface with hardware from the OS, and hardware vendors keep adding and improving features (darn them!).
The BIOS is what allows motherboard manufacturers to have different chipsets with different memory, disk, etc, controllers. The BIOS translates basic data requests from the operating system into the specific instructions that each chip requires.
I'm all for open standards on hardware, but the fact is that every time a new feature is introduced or an old feature is upgraded, you need a backwards compatible method of accessing it. Thus the BIOS layer.
My $0.02.
-azmaveth
BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, and as for the idea of enahancing the BIOS kindof defeats the purpose of having a bare bones way of controling the hardware, however if it is implemented well, it could provide a good intermediate level between the BIOS and a full OS for low level diagnostics, but i don't see a need for web browsing.
Admittedly, I'm over my head here, but can't you have a complex BIOS that gets out of the way when the OS boots, or acts as a mini OS when the real OS wont load?
I mean most support for computers is online now, and its kinda hard to log in to "dell.com" if the damn thing won't boot.
Why can't the bios be both? for instance: IBM used to have a BASIC interpretor in bios (286 and pre), but it didnt get used unless the system didn't find an OS. It didn't get in the way.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
In other news, Microsoft today announced the availability of Bios XP Service Pack 3, available as a 900MB download from www.microsoft.com or on two handy CD's for only $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
we used to buy the magazines, go to the stores and log on to the net to be eagerly greeted with hot new tech that made us want to immediately scrap the $10k worth of goodies we'd just bought the week before.
Now it seems that every day brings "innovations" that seem designed to further my intent to hang on to what I've got forever if I can manage it.
What's wrong with this picture?
KFG
When i am doing a fresh install of WIN2K and REDHAT on my comps (a once-in-6-months exercise) i make sure the machine is not even physically hooked up to the net untill i have a software firewall configured, up and running. I keep the firewall packages on CDs, along with config files, and ONLY AFTER these are setup, i go online to install other things, update drivers, etc (usually, only for win2k, not for redhat, which is trivial to bring back to my customized setup)...
;) ...
having TCP/IP built into the bios, with no firewalling support, and no possibility of frequent/safe upating, no easy way to check for "being" owned is a very bad idea. Also, Phoenix being a popular bios manufacturer, there will be a lot of worms targetting this bios tcp/ip stack.
I dont see a single genuine advantage of having all this crap in the BIOS anyway. I mean, if u hose ur drive, and need to go online for some critical information/software before u can bring ur comp back up, just keep a KNOPPIX cd handy. I personally think BIOS shud be thinning down even further, given none of the modern OSes really use most of the services, and the BIOS mostly just gets in their way. All the bios shud be capable of, is to bring up the OS, and then let the OS configure everything. It wud be so neat to have the OS kernel setup all the hardware, the powersaving policies, everything when it starts up. Of course, the best is to just have the OS kernel as the bios!! just throw this anachronism completely out. (yeah for ppl whos fav os is not linux, sumthing else might need to be worked out
Ghoul
Sigura Non Grata
HP/Compaq Servers and SUN have some similar things on their servers now. Although no web browser, and not technically BIOS. The Remote Insight Lights-out (RILo)boards provide great disaster recovery tools. Compaq An oldie but goodie is SUN Solaris PROM. Much more useful than BIOS.
I know people clammor for the good ole days of BIOS and CMOS, but now we just need to accept that these new products are going to be better.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Personally, I'm happy enough just using a bootable disk to fix WinXP (yeah, I know), if it gets hosed. It actually doesn't happen very often anyway. But if for some reason the OS was hosed and using bootable media wasn't an option (perhaps security concerns, for example), how would this be better than just have LILO and a dedicated "repair" partition with linux and a bunch of repair tools on it? This way, as another poster commented, you aren't introducing unneccesary complexity into BIOS. and in fact, this seems very similar to what Phoenix is doing - the ZDNET article mentioned that the bios would have special hard drive partitions with recovery apps at it's disposal. So it seems like the only thing we're doing here is giving BIOS the ability to operate apps on a recovery partition directly, instead of using LILO+linux. Unless your boot record is screwed as well, what's the advantage to this? And if your hard drive is that trashed, doesn't it make more sense to stick the drive in a machine that also has a working HD, copy what you can, and reformat? For that matter, if your hard drive is getting pooched so often that you NEED dedicated bios support, then you should replace it. At least,that's my opinion. IAACTAAHBMMIPS (I Am A Computer Technician As A Hobby But My Major Is Political Science)
I'm the stranger...posting to
So Windows crashes, and you can't get it to come back up. No problem! You just boot up into your BIOS, send the built-in web-browser to support.microsoft.com, and then your set.
Dammit! And I'm using the new BORK edition BIOS....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've always wondered why IEEE 1275 / OpenBIOS / OpenFirmware never caught on. IMO it is a much better and much more powerful alternative to the closed and aging BIOS found in most PC's. People are always complaining about "Closed" operating systems but don't bat an eye that their BIOS is closed...
Could this be the first version of a 'Auto-Updater' for future Palladium-enabled BIOSes?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
there isn't anything about BIOS programming that is proprietary or costly
What about talking to the motherboard's chipset? Many chipsets have settings that if accidentally triggered could make the motherboard HCF. Of course, the official BIOS is careful never to trigger those settings, but just randomly poking at the I/O registers could do Bad Things.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What if they called it an OS on a chip?
Make it separate from the BIOS; but possibly on the same EEPROM chip; it will only load up if you hold down the F12 button (or something) when you boot.
After the BIOS hands the control of the
machine to the OS, to what extent is the
BIOS used, if at all? I mean, userspace
code cannot circumvent the OS -- if it tries,
the process gets killed by the OS. AFAIK, there
is no such a relation between the OS and the BIOS:
if the OS tries to circumvent the BIOS and talk
directly to some device, it does not get killed.
So, the BIOS is not a layer below the OS,
right? I am talking about real OS's, not DOS
or 'doze 95.
Not even Emacs comes with one of those. ;)
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
Actually, newer Macs use OpenFirmware. I have it on both of my Macs, and they're both over two years old.
For a little bit of fun, hold down CMD+OPT+O+F at the boot chime. This will put you into the PROM, which is scriptable in Forth.
Given that board test and driver suites are written in OF, I don't see any reason at all why a web browser would be difficult. Text-only, perhaps -- but not terribly difficult.
There is also a project I noticed one day on Freshmeat that I think was called Retro Native Forth, for the IA32 arch. I wonder if that could be molded into an OF-like role on that platform?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
"Admittedly, I'm over my head here, but can't you have a complex BIOS that gets out of the way when the OS boots, or acts as a mini OS when the real OS wont load?"
Sun firmware contains a FORTH interpreter that "can" do "anything". It offers all kinds of access to hardware, and can even be used to tune the OS after boot. There's a symbolic debugger, facilities for running programs that don't need an OS, and tty support. If you wanted/needed to be clever, you could do *anything* from here.
Except for the fact that PCs follow certain design factors (decisions made in the early-mid 1980s), there is no reason we couldn't have something similar in the PC world.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It'll be a cold day in hell that I run any machine capable of connecting to the net without my telling it to explicitly.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Because we need a standard way to interface with hardware from the OS
Standard way?
That's funny, because my BIOS (a pre-98 Award BIOS) recognizes my primary HDD as a 8GB drive, while the label upon my drive, and my OS, say that it's a 15GB...
BIOSes are used by old operating systems (DOS, for instance). Modern OS rely on their personal hardware recognition. On modern machines, a BIOS is only the crap that makes your machine to boot up in 15/30 seconds, while you could have a 2 seconds boot sequence (cfr. LinuxBIOS).
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
I pity the potential contributor to society who spends his cycles trying to defend ones right to use a name which may cause confusion in a small market space.
.. you just can't open a computer company called Apple. Thems the breaks. It actually helps people less knowledgable than you not get rooked or confused. Your anti corperate ire, which I tend to have lots of myself, could be far more usefully directed than getting all irate when somebody has a semi-legit case with trademark dilution .. I mean, they didnt even try and put Pheonix the browser out of 'business', they just wanted them to change their name.
You wanna rail against dirty corperate tactics, of which we both know there are many?
a) find a real dirty corperate tactic (shouldnt be too hard)
b) spend your valuable time fighting it
But honest to god, dude, you are welcome to open a sofa store called Apple
No biggie, so chillax and fight the battles worth fighting.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I totally agree this is bad.
:-)
I understand Phoenix is trying to protect their business, but really, the days of the BIOS as it is should be over.
The BIOS is a legacy piece of crap that serves practically no purpose, but to boot the OS.
The services provided for the "Input/Output" go largely unused, mainly because the majority are 16 bit services and no modern OS has a way to call them in the first place (well, without a high latency). Even the 32 bit services go largely unused,- PCI for example is practically always implemented by a driver that does direct IO vs. calling the BIOS.
In other words, non of the most prominent operating systems call the BIOS for services such as RS-232, IDE, LPT, Video, you name it, after the apprioriate drivers are loaded.
The REAL purpose of the BIOS should be: initialize the hardware up to a point so that it can boot the OS. This means memory initialization, some timer and interrupt related stuff and whatever code is required for the boot devices (I personally think IDE and Ethernet are the most important, but I can see that USB and SCSI are important to a lot of people)
After that the BIOS should load the OS image and be done.
Don't think I'm making this thing up; I've actually implemented a boot loader that completely eliminated the need for a BIOS and it was very fast; ready to boot of the harddrive as soon as the harddrive was spin up (e.g. 3 seconds!)
LinuxBIOS is doing something similar.
Anyways, sorry for this little rant without any proper links or so, but I gotta go to be in time for Apres-Ski happy hour!
Yes, very bad, because you know if this happens one day you'll see:
Click here to flash your bios.
And you can count the number of seconds on your right hand that will elapse before that link fries your motherboard.
Let's hammer that home, shall we? Instead of a minimialist BIOS setup, Award and Asus have decided that the following features are more important than conextual help on the P4PE (rev. 1.03) board;
That's not all...
Tom's Hardware gave this one a thumbs up?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I am sorry, but this is absolutely true. The BIOS only exists as a concept on the PC. I like to give the Amiga OS as an example in this case.
(It was a single-user Multitasking, 32-bit OS, in late 80s to mid-90s. Last significant version was 3.1 in 1992 iirc, though 3.9 was released in 2001).
Let's take my A1200. What did it consist of? Well, it had the CPU, a custom chipset on the mainboard with DMA-accessible 2MB of RAM and an expansion slot. As you will see, there was hardware support for some things and then everything else was part of the OS:
Hardware-wise a number of protocols were supported, most importantly the mouse and AutoConfig. The mouse was simple. But AutoConfig was the plug'n'play of the 80s. (Introduced with Amiga3000 I think). It scanned the expansion bus (Think PCI bus). No, I should not say scan. It makes everything seem like windows scanning for hardware. It just sent a couple of signals on the bus and any devices that were there responded to acknowledge their presence, then the AutoConfig would ask them some stuff, like, if they had any ROM.
Now, what was interesting was that the A1200 itself had a (512k?) ROM, which contained basically the Kickstart and a large part of the OS (the kernel, disk operations and basic windowing system). The main part of the kickstart was the bootloader. Now, I don't see anything related to BIOS here. The sequence was basically
autoconfig->kickstart->kernel->?
Another interesting thing that hapenned around the same time that the kernel was loaded was what happenned to the ROMs that other devices that were connected on the bus declared. For example, my A1200 had a SCSI card addeed. The drivers for the OS were actually on a ROM on the SCSI card. When AutoConfig asked the card, it said it had a ROM. The same type of rom filesystem was used for the SCSI ROM and the Motherboard ROM. So, basically the ROM was looked at via the ROM filesystem and any libraries in there (the driver was just a shared library and shared device) were added to the system. Very simple.
So, I dunno if you would call AutoConfig a BIOS in itself. Or if you would call the ROM FileSystem part of a BIOS. In any case, the FileSystem concept was part of the OS, which used it to access all kinds of devices. The AutoConfig was an extremely simple protocol that could be done with a minimal amount of hardware. I think the specs are less than 20 pages in the Amiga Hardware Manual.
Anyway, all I see here is the hardware, some *standard protocols* that were implemented on the hardware itself, the bootloader and then the operating system itself.
BTW, Linux systems just ignore the BIOS completely, don't they?
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
The PC doesn't need a graphical OS with all that fancy nicknack. The PC needs:
* A serial console! I don't want to connect a VGA monitor to the machine just for tuning the bootdevice
* Get rid of all that INT13 C/H/S booting crap
* The BIOS needs real SCSI support, no more SCSI-BIOS remapping
* Realmode should be dumped completly! When you power on the PC it should be in protected mode immediatly
Everything else like network support is neat, but can be optional.
Just my 2c, Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com