In-Depth Look At LinuxBIOS

DrSkwid writes "With PhoenixBIOS reading your email because of such inordinate boot up times for Windows and other OSs, it was remarked in #plan9 about our 5s boot times using LinuxBIOS. My friend f2f pasted an article from Linux Journal which looks at the basic structure of LinuxBIOS, the origins of LinuxBIOS and how it evolved to its current state. It also covers the platforms supported and the lessons they have learned about trying to marry a GPL project to some of the lowest-level, most heavily guarded secrets that vendors possess."

Comments

Obligatory

[slash-tard]

Does it run linux?

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you pay SCO a fee!

Re:Obligatory

[Brian Dennehy]

Only in Soviet Russia. (Think about it.)

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, only Microsoft Bob, sorry. ;)

Re:Obligatory

[TedCheshireAcad]

Imagine a Beowulf....

oh...wait....

Re:Obligatory

[neko9]

in this case "But Does It Run Windows?" would be more apropriate :-)

Re:Obligatory

[agentforsythe]

imagine a witty comment... oh... wait...

Already tried...?

[xeon4life]

Didn't Microsoft want to do the same thing? Only Linux advocates started to become angry... -Xeon

Re:Already tried...?

[Lane.exe]

Yeah, but in this case, we'd have the source code and could see what was going on, modify it if we needed to, and because of this, it couldn't be used to lock other OS's out.

Re:Already tried...?

[garcia]

but the problem is that MS is currently the leader (and will likely remain to be). Their joining evil forces with Phoenix will cause all computers to be locked down.

Windows is not going to run on LinuxBIOS and Linux isn't going to run on Phoenix/MS BIOS.

While it's all well and good for the majority of us it's not good for the consumer.

Re:Already tried...?

[sflory]

Actually Linuxbios already boots windows;-)
http://www.linuxbios.org/news/index.ht ml#NT

Re:Already tried...?

[7-Vodka]

Come on! we all know that if Microsoft wrote the bios for your computer it would be:

1. Dependant upon the OS, ie. windows
2. Closed source. Non-Free Software.
3. EULA'd up the ass-crack
4. Bloated. At least a million lines of code. Getting worse with each compulsory release, a fact they would gloat about instead of hang their heads in shame
5. Secure through obscurity; lots of exploits, fingers crossed no one ever sees the code *wink wink*
   'our code is secure' ; 'Oh wait you want us to show our competitors! Nooo it's a risk to national security'.
6. Fairly expensive
7. Followed bi-yearly by new versions which broke compatibility slightly, were fairly expensive to upgrade to, brought little new functionality
8. Make use of cryptic, messy, secret, patent-encumbered file formats and interfaces.
9. Hard to fit into multi-OS environment
10. Prone to spitting out cryptic error messages as it bluescreened and hard locked
11. Somewhat likely to phone home with private user information
12. Fully Palladium(tm) compliant, locking the user out of every action not fully approved by corporate america regardless of the law.

Why would we not want to be subjected to all these wonderful qualities without the wait to get into windows?
"Get everything listed and MORE in less than 20 seconds!"

Re:Already tried...?

[garcia]

that's not what I was talking about... I am talking about when DRM is entrenched in the OS and the BIOS.

Re:Already tried...?

[Rick the Red]

They keep claiming that DRM will be optional, so booting Windows 2010 (or whatever) on Linux BIOS sounds like a great way to ensure that DRM will never darken my door. And if it won't boot from a non-DRM BIOS, then we have proof they've been lying all along.

Personally, I'll never buy any DRM-based media (movies, music, cable TV, etc.), so I don't ever intend to have DRM-enabled hardware. So far, games are about the only reason I have to continue running Windows, and if the games of the future all require DRM then I'll just stick with the Windows I have today (I still run 98 for the games XP won't play. Hell, I still run DOS for the stuff XP won't play. It's far easier to boot into DOS to run "legacy" apps than it is to migrate my data to something else, especially since in some cases "someting else" doesn't exist.)

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Didn't Microsoft want to do the same thing?

No, what Microsoft has ALREADY done, through pressure on Phoenix BIOS (submitted by yours truly) and on AMI BIOS (and probably every other BIOS maker), has far more sinister overtones.

The purpose of the new Microsoft-enabled BIOSes is to enable a new kind of "trusted" software and files that ARE UNUSABLE if the owner of the machine alters any of the "protected" elements of his computer.

Lets say you write some sort of upgrade for your computer, or you don't like something about how your computer runs and you want to change it (or someone else write such code and you want to install it). Code that changes the BIOS. What the new Trust system does is detect that you changed your computer and any "secure" software and data are unreadable. The music you downloaded will be unusable. The image processing software you had installed can no longer run. The spreadsheet you just bought can not install. Your favorite game can not connect to the server. The new "secure" e-mail Microsoft is advertizing will be unreadable.

But here's the REALLY scary part. Another slashdot story reported Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router. What the story missed was the fact that these new Cisco routers are based on Trusted Computing. That don't actually do anything to block viruses. What they can do is use Trusted Computing to verify that you have specific software installed, such as approved anti-virus software and an approved firewall. The way they "fight viruses" is by refusing to permit you an internet connection unless it verifies you are compliant. Well, if you changed your BIOS at all, or if you changed anything else about your computer, then the Trust chip in your computer reports a "failed" response. The router cannot verify that the approved anti-virus software and/or firewall are installed. You are therefore DENIED an internet connection.

The president's Cyber Security advisor gave a speech at an industry conference and he called on ISP's to install these routers and in effect to impose Trusted Computing compliance onto all of their customers as part of the terms of service for internet access.

If you try to change or control your system in any way then none of the new software will run, none of the new files will be readable, and ultimately you may be denied internet access. In effect you would no longer own your computer.

There is only one thing wrong with Trusted Computing - you are FORBIDDEN to know your own key that is secreted inside the Trust chip. When you don't know your own key then other people can turn your computer against you and lock you in or lock you out of anything. If you DID know this key you would be in full control of your computer.

When it comes to Trusted Computing simply demand to know your key. If they refuse to let you know your own key then tell them to go to hell.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[unixdad]

...then we have proof they've been lying all along.

You mean all the times they've been caught before weren't good enough?



Yes, I know you meant "lying about DRM". They've been caught often enough at it that I've
#define Default_believe_MS 0

Re:Already tried...?

[phliar]

They keep claiming that DRM will be optional, ...

Yeah, "optional." The way it (the thing they used to call Palladium, I don't remember what it's called now) works is: there's write-once storage in a crypto processor on the motherboard and as the machine boots each software component (BIOS, kernel, application) writes a crypto-secure signature to it. Applications can read this string of signatures. Visiting a bank web-site (or music shop or ticketmaster or...) your machine would be required to present a valid string of signatures. This allows them to ensure you're running exactly what they want. "We only support IE6 on Windows" -- now you can't get past an IE-only website by simply setting your User-Agent header. You, the owner, are welcome to disable it -- but now you can't do any online banking or music purchase, or .... This means we're welcome to screw around with our little free software hobby, but in the real world you will have to enable DRM and run approved software.

Personally, I'll never buy any DRM-based media (movies, music, cable TV, etc.), so I don't ever intend to have DRM-enabled hardware.

What I'm afraid of is that it will become the only way content is available. Phase out un-encrypted CDs. Fix the DVD-CSS security hole. Voila! No more fair-use.

Re:Already tried...?

[scdeimos]

Not only that, but because of code bloat you'd be required to upgrade your motherboard to increase the capacity of your flash ROMs every twelve months.

Lest we foregt that some MS OS service packs have been larger than the original OS. :)

Re:Already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course! You can't steal ideas from an OS you can't boot.
</Joke-targetted-for-immediate-troll-mod>

Re:Already tried...?

[lordholm]

About the routers. I 'd reckon that it would be horrible if an ISP used this, but they won't. The functionality will be used buy larger organisations that register MAC-adresses for any computer that is supposed to be allowed access to the Internet anyway. It really isn't that bad. However, it is bad if you consider the vendor lock-in of anti virus sw, but I would suppose that it is user configurable.

TCPA is not evil in itself, it is just a chip in which you can store private encryption keys. It is some of the potential uses of this technology that is evil. TCPA is however useless since all it does is to hide encryption keys, and I can do that by "chown root keys; chmod 400 keys", in a properly configured system.

Re:Already tried...?

[silence535]

The president's Cyber Security advisor gave a speech at an industry conference and he called on ISP's to install these routers and in effect to impose Trusted Computing compliance onto all of their customers as part of the terms of service for internet access.

Yes, and this will be the time when all of us geeks will dig out good ole Fidonet Software and start rebuilding our own infrastructure.

But right now I have a valid contract with my provider, which does not require me to run some specific hardware and I would refuse to sign any such terms.

I don't think that ISPs will follow this recommendation. They have happily gained millions of new home "I can read my email and use a browser" customers who would definately refuse to buy a new computer for no obvious advantage.

-silence

Re:Already tried...?

[hdparm]

You've missed an important feature - when pressed, key brings up clippy and all you ever wanted to know about BIO$ settings is at your fingertips.

Re:Already tried...?

[hdparm]

You've missed an important feature - when pressed, key brings up clippy and all you ever wanted to know about BIO$ settings is at your fingertips.

Here, extrants on now.

Re:Already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and this will be the time when all of us geeks will dig out good ole Fidonet Software and start rebuilding our own infrastructure.

No shit. I'll be the first to start an ISP for my area if it ever becomes a problem.

Re:Already tried...?

[True Grit]

1. What I'm afraid of is that it will become the only way content is available. Phase out un-encrypted CDs. Fix the DVD-CSS security hole. Voila! No more fair-use.

And how does MS/RIAA force DRM on everyone, if everyone has the option to not buy it? I'm not concerned about DRM itself, I myself simply won't use it, and by definition therefore, won't use any service/content that depends on it. If enough people avoid it, the content makers will get the message and provide their content by other ways, after all, they have to convince us to pay them for their content, if we don't pay, they don't make any money. The only danger I foresee is these folks managing to convince the government to *mandate* DRM usage. That would be a problem.

Re:Already tried...?

[maximilln]

Maybe it's an effort to isolate the OS community from the rest of the world. If linux users can't use the usual trusted computing networks then someone will set up an ISP which we can connect to. But they'll have less corporate support, and less money, and their network will be slower, and it will be plagued by script-kiddies running hacked Win systems and setting up DDoS attacks.

Isolate and destroy. It's the tactic used in the American office every day.

Re:Already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trouble is, most people won't see the threat in this and will happily tread along on the road MS & RIAA shows them without looking for [better|cheaper|more secure] alternatives.

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

About the routers. I 'd reckon that it would be horrible if an ISP used this, but they won't.

I certainly hope it never happens, but it is being advertized as a GoodThing. Even Slashdot reported it as an "anti-virus" measure. It also gives ISP's the power to force you to any software they want. They can force all customers to run on their own machines software that throttles their bandwidth, or that enforces any Terms fo Service rules they like, that enables tracking and snooping. ISP's are motivated to install the routers because it gives them power and control over their customers. From the ISP's point of view it's a GoodThing for them. It allows them to secure their network however they like.

The only thing holding ISP's back from doing so is that they would have to lock out every customer who doesn't own a Trusted Computer (or chooses not to activate Trusted compliance). Obviously they can't do it today because basicly no one has such a machine, and they would lose every single customer. However Trusted machines are hitting the store shelves today, and the plan is that within a year or so every single machine sold will have a Trust chip installed by default. Over the following three years pretty much all systems will be replaced anyway through the normal upgrade process. As the penetration gets into the 70% to 90% range if becomes fairly easy to make it mandatory for customers to "upgrade" to a new "enhanced machine" and to simply blame any problems on their old "obsolete" machine.

It is very VERY possible if there is no public backlash against Trusted Computing. They simply need to include it in all new machines.

will be used buy larger organisations that register MAC-adresses for any computer that is supposed to be allowed access

You mean companies like my cable ISP? They use MAC address to authenticate access. The new Cisco Trusted router is vastly more powerfull than any sort of MAC authentication.

TCPA is not evil in itself

It is evil in that the central design criteria is to prohibit the owner from knowing his own key. That "feature" only serves to enable evil abuses. There is nothing beneficial the system can do that could not be done just as well with an identical system where the owner gets a printed copy of his keys.

\all it does is to hide encryption keys, and I can do that by "chown root keys; chmod 400 keys", in a properly configured system.

I hate to "defend" TCPA, but that is not true. No matter how well you "properly configure" a system, there is always the risk of being compromised by a previously unknown vulnerability. With TCPA (or with a non-malicious system where you were given a printed copy of your keys) it would be physically impossible for malicious software to ever get access to the keys. It would therefore be physically impossible for malicious software to read and transmit any of your secure private data, impossible for it to alter secure data (though it can still delete that data), impossible for it to install a keylogger or in any way currupt the boot process without you being alerted to the problem.

Those benefits are being held up as justification for TCPA and as defence of TCPA. It is a bogus defence of TCPA because none of those arguments can justify forbidding the owner to know his own key.

Those promoting TCPA simply refuse to permit a system where the owner knows his keys. Such a system would not be a "Trusted" computer. The owner of the machine would have the ability to alter his system in any way he likes and the trust would be broken. Teh RIAA could no longer turst that DRM would be enforced against the owner of the machine.

The true motivation behind TCPA is to enforce a Trust syste. A Trust system is purely of malicious use and intent - it is "evil". TCPA is "evil".

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

start rebuilding our own infrastructure

Sure, you'd be perfectly free to do so. However you would be locked out of the real internet. Your new "freenet" would not have access to any of the millions of existing websites. You would not have access to anyone on the real internet. You would not be able to run any of teh new software. You would not be able to use any of the new files. You would be locked out of everything. It would be you and two friends on a little LAN with access to nothing else.

customers who would definately refuse to buy a new computer for no obvious advantage

Every few years old obsolete machines get replaced by new faster and cheaper machines with 10 times the harddrive space and 10 times the RAM.

Aunt Ditzy and uncle Clueless will not be choosing some special Trusted machine. No matter where aunt Ditzy and uncle Clueless go to buy a replacement, no matter which machine they select, they will simply be handed a machine with a Trust chip inside.

It's an insideous and devestaingly effective plan. They don't need to convince anyone to buy a Trusted machine. They simply plan to hand out Trust chips in EVERY new machine produced. Such machines are just hitting the stores today. The plan is that within a year or so 100% of new machines to be so equipped.

Give it one year for the manufacturing switchover and old inventry to clear out. Give it another three years or so for the normal obsolecence/replacement cycle. Abracadabra, presto chango, you have the vast majority of the public in possession of a Trusted machine. At that point ISP's can install the new Cisco routers and ban non-trusted machines fairly painlessly as an anti-virus measure as part of their terms of service. If you complain they will simply blame your obsolete and incompatible machine. They'll just tell you to toss your 5 year old peice of junk and buy a new machine if you want service.

It is a very easy and very possible scenario. The ONLY thing that can stop it is if there is a public backlash against Trusted Computing. We had such a backlash against the Pentium CPU-ID numbers, so hopefully there will be a backlash here too. But it's not guaranteed. They are promting Trust as a GoodThing. As an anti-virus and security anti-piracy and privacy measure. They are spending/will-spend millions on advertizing and public relations and spin. The next version of Windows will only fully work on the new Trusted machines.

You know it's evil, I know it's evil, but the public just wants to buy a computer that "just works". A Trusted computer will "just work", and any non-Trusted computer will increasingly fail to work with the new software and new files and new websites and ultimately to connect to the new routers. Non-trusted machines will start producing more and more error messages whenever they run into Trusted software or Trusted files or Trusted websites. In particular websites can and will use it to enforce that ads are displayed. If you have ads blocked then they don't want to let you see the website. If you don't have a Trusted computer they can't tell if ads are blocked and they will refuse to display the website. At more and more websites you will simply get error messages saying that there is a problem with YOUR computer. An error message saying you need to a secure NEXUS (or whatever). The public will get a Trusted machine just to get the damn websites to work. They don't care what Trust is or what it does, they just want to see the damn website and they want the damn machine to work without all the damn error messages.

The surest way to lose a battle is to underestimate the opponent and not bother to fight it. This is a huge movenment with hundreds of companies behind it and hundreds of millions invested in it. Smart people with very thorough plans. It even has support in congress.

There is a very real threat. They have a very plausible plan to pull a Microsoft style "embrace and extend" tactic to cause a gradual but total switchover given a few years.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Wolfrider]

+6 Insightful / Informative (Funny? yet sadly true)

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Given a few years it could be even worse than that. It could become impossible to connect to the internet at all with a non-trusted machine.

Assuming all new machines are shipped with a Trust chip inside, 85% of all home PC's will be relaced within 3 years or so and ISP's can install the Cisco routers making Trusted Computing mandatory on customers. Once the majority of ISP's are using Trusted computing then the internet backbone can switch over to Trusted Computing. This is what teh national Cyber Security advisor was advocating - to secure the national internet infrastructure against viruses and against attacks.

If it is installed on the internet backbone, then all ISP's could be not only forced to run Trusted Machines, but they could be forced to enforce Trusted Computing on every other customer and network they connect to. It becomes a self-enforcing chain all the way out to the edge.

It's very speculative and at least several years into the future, but it is VERY possible, and it is seriously being advocated by powerful businesses and by elements of the US governemnt, and even in UNITED NATIONS organisations. In my research on Trusted Computing I have come across a frightening number of UN documents that directly or indirectly support such a system.

If the US attempted to impose such a system the entire world would revolt against such US control. But such a system could very easily be imposed globally through UN concensus and UN control and UN mandate.

It can be sold as an anti-virus measure. It can be sold as anti-piracy. Sold as pro-security. Pro-privacy. Pro-commerce. The EU can use it to Nazi sites and other hate speech that is legal under US free speech. Everyone can use it to block whatever they define as obscene porn, and we all know how powerful it is to play the "kiddyporn" card. Various countries can use it to censor anything and everything, including criticism of their own governemnt. It can be used to give law-enforcement increadible powers to "fight and catch criminals". And of cource it is sold as anti-terrorism - the internet infrastructure must be secured against attack.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[silence535]

Sure, you'd be perfectly free to do so. However you would be locked out of the real internet. Your new "freenet" would not have access to any of the millions of existing websites.

Nonono, the name was FIDOnet. It used Modems and the 'Store and Forward' logic. And it was fun, and it had culture. We already HAD our own infrastructure and in theory no one could stop us reviving it.
And there could be 'trust'ed gateways to the Internet and cachenodes inside this network.

But probably you are right, better stand up against than run from the enemy. Even tho "There is no disgrace in running away from a man with a baseball bat."

For the rest of your comment I'd give you +1 insightful if I had any modpoints.

-silence

Re:already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

if (TCPA == true) then begin

kill -9 seti@athome
uninstall seti@athome
spam_exploit_and_flood "seti@athome.com"

end

open4free

Re:Already tried...?

[maximilln]

All the better reason for us to begin starting Linux (and open source) focused ISPs now. If a competent business based on Linux users can be established early then the major backbone providers will begin to rely on open source compatibility to remain financially viable. As long as the open source dollars are mixed with Windows dollars we're really do nothing more than contributing to this sort of closed source spookshow junk.

Right now when Windows users cry for security the only option is to give it to them. If we can pull the Open Source dollars away from Windows users then Windows oriented ISPs will be forced to take a hardline approach to their users that cry. Linux oriented ISPs will have a lower bottom line because the open source users tend to be less vulnerable to long term exploits. I've seen many more Linux users willing to zero and reinstall their system based upon suspicious syslogs and odd system behavior. Windows users will happily use an ailing zombie box for years until it flat-out refuses to boot.

Re:Already tried...?

[EdHead2003]

However you would be locked out of the real internet. Your new "freenet" would not have access to any of the millions of existing websites. You would not have access to anyone on the real internet. You would not be able to run any of teh new software.

Keep talking... you've almost convinced me. Proper discussions of techie things, no more pop-up-mercials, a-holes outnumbered by engineers in useful newsgroups and no spam. So I can't go over to PWC's corporate site and 'Find out the difference Between Good Advice and Great Advice' via a Flash animation? Hey, I'll live with it.

Seriously though, in some senses one can argue that the net is shot to hell and we need to start over anyway.

Re:Already tried...?

[Suidae]

there's write-once storage in a crypto processor on the motherboard and as the machine boots each software component (BIOS, kernel, application) writes a crypto-secure signature to it. Applications can read this string of signatures. Visiting a bank web-site (or music shop or ticketmaster or...) your machine would be required to present a valid string of signatures

I understand that this is a pretty simplified overview, but I don't see how this could possibly give a remote machine any idea what your machine is running. My linux machine can feed the crypto hardware whatever signatures I want to give it, including those from windows and IE. And if the crypto hardware isn't secret or computationally infeasable, I could run windows in a fully virtual environment with virtual DRM.

Re:Already tried...?

[phliar]

The magic of crypto! It's not just a question of writing a value like "42" -- instead it will be like a challenge/response between the application and the crypto processor.

Re:Already tried...?

[Rich0]

I think the idea is that the string will work like this:

1. DRM chip is first thing to run on computer (before regular BIOS).
2. DRM calculates hash of BIOS, stores in secure memory.
3. BIOS runs.
4. BIOS calculates hash of bootloader, stores in secure memroy.
5. Bootloader runs.
6. Bootloader calculates hash of OS kernel, stores in secure memory.
7. And so on with the OS and its essential components.

Your DRM chip will have a private key burned into it, whose public key will be publicly known. The private key will be unobtainable without serious hardware attacks.

When you go to view a movie online, the website wants to verify that the movie is being downloaded by a DRM-compliant player into secure memory that no other app can access. So, the website tells you to ask your DRM chip to give it a signed list of hashes. The OS asks the DRM chip to take the list of hashes and sign it with the internal private key, then the OS gives it to the website. It then looks at the hashes against a database of approved BIOS/bootloader/OS combos.

If you boot linuxbios, then the DRM chip will record a hash of that bios instead. Your bios at that point could feed it all the fake hashes to store after that point, but the bios will still be identified. The website won't let you in if you have a linuxbios hash. And you can't generate a hash for a normal bios since you don't have the private key to sign it. Of course, you can't just replay a hash from booting using a normal bios since the real algorithm would have a challenge/response aspect to it.

It is quite possible using public-key crypto and secure hardware modules to make it impossible to falsify what OS you are booting from. The only way to bypass this is to either figure out your private key (hardware-level attack or factoring), or somehow get the foreign computer to use a different public key that you know the private key for (may be easy or hard depending on overall design).

Most likely the DRM chip will have both a public and private key in it. The public key will let the DRM masters send instructions to the chip (think of BIOS'es which only let you flash updates that are signed by the vendor), The private key will be used as described above. To make the system more hackerproof the vendor could even not retain a copy of the private key after it is burned - just the public key.

With a non-secure OS you can try to misrepresent yourself to a foreign website, but without the necessary private keys you won't be able to falsify the output of the DRM chip. And if every chip has a unique private key hardware attacks will only work to unlock an individual PC.

Re:Already tried...?

[phliar]

...if everyone has the option to not buy it?

Here's how you do it: first you introduce a new audio format with secure DRM with a higher bit-rate or more than 16 bits or a smaller device -- anything to make the masses think it's better. Then you phase out older non-DRM formats. It'll take more than a year or two, but a corporation can afford to wait. Sure, you have to option to not buy DRM'ed formats -- just like today you have the option to not buy from RIAA members and convicted monopolists.

Re:Already tried...?

[Rich0]

There is nothing beneficial the system can do that could not be done just as well with an identical system where the owner gets a printed copy of his keys.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think that trusted computing is a great idea - if the computer owner is in true control of his machine.

Think about it - imagine if the first time you powered on a computer it generated a keypair and gave you both keys. You'd publish the public half and keep the private half safe and secure off the machine. The private half is also stored the trusted memory safe with hardware-level protection.

Now you can be sure when you boot up your PC that nobody has installed a hack of any kind in it. They can't install a PCI card which logs your keystrokes. They can't install a secret device driver which does the same. If done right, they probably could protect even the keyboard and monitor cables.

I can sign all my software and the machine won't run anything that I didn't put there. I could TRUST my machine.

If a website asked me to prove that I was running IE I could run a program which accessed my private key from secure storage (encrypted on disk, the encryption key is secure in hardware-secured memory), take a hash of IE, and sign it and send it to the website. No DRM ability here.

Of course, the way it will really work is that the computer owner won't get a copy of his private key. Whoever owns the private key is the person who really is in power here...

I think the solution should be that legislation should be passed stating that whenever anybody buys hardware of software they should be given a readable copy of any keys it contains, as well as a copy of any related private keys that it does not contain. So if I buy a BIOS which vefifies that BIOS updates are signed by the manufacturer, they would have to supply me with their signing key so that I can sign my own BIOS updates.

Re:Already tried...?

[phliar]

For more details on how this works and why it's unbreakable (given suitable hardware) read Seth Schoen's paper on Trusted Computing (NGSCB, used to be called Palladium).

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

'trust'ed gateways to the Internet

Trusted Computing could make such gateways impossible, short of sitting there and copying text by hand.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Exactly. It's good as long as you get your key.

they probably could protect even the keyboard and monitor cables

As a matter of fact Microsoft's Palladium/NaGSCaB mandates exactly that. The monitor and keyboard must encrypt all data. I'm pretty sure it applies to the mouse too.

As for a law about keys, I had a similar thought. I even came up with a very "innocent" and attractive way of doing so. You hype the threat all data on a computer, or even all data in an entire company, being effectively destroyed by a single glitched chip. One chip glitch could bankrupt an entire Fortune-500 company if all employee machines need to authenticate to the network through a central server and the chip in that server dies. No one could authenticate and ALL company files would be unreadable, and any backup files would be unreadable.

Teh law would say that any product containing such a key either has to make that key available to the owner, or the product must contain a prominant warning label that use of this product may cause irrerievable data loss or destruction.

Such a disclaimer would be completely harmless in a sophisticated industry like banking that might actually desire not to be able to access their own keys, but such a disclaimer would be a public relations nightmare on consumer products.

Unfortunately congress is far more likely to pass some stupid law mandating crippled technology than to protect the public against such.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[riffenator]

However Trusted machines are hitting the store shelves today, and the plan is that within a year or so every single machine sold will have a Trust chip installed by default. Over the following three years pretty much all systems will be replaced anyway through the normal upgrade process. As the penetration gets into the 70% to 90% range if becomes fairly easy to make it mandatory for customers to "upgrade" to a new "enhanced machine" and to simply blame any problems on their old "obsolete" machine.

I dont think Apple has jumped aboard that bandwagon. Are they going to lock out every mac user too?

Re:Already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Presently, the only people who block out non-Microsoft User-Agent strings are the morons who actually think it means anything.

The vast majority of websites out there don't care what browser you're using. What's more, it takes effort to check the User-Agent string. Effort that the vast majority of websites don't want to expend for something so pointless.

So what makes you think very many people are going to rush to implement this SuperParanoidCryptoAuth you speak of? This seems to me like a lot of work for zero gain. In the end, all they are doing is blocking out 100% of current machines, as nobody has deployed this new technology yet. If they do implement this scheme, they would be blocking out all of the 98, 2000, XP, etc., installs, which still exist today.

Not to mention that in your scenario, website operators would have to maintain their list of authorized keys, everytime a new patch or service pack to Windows or IE was released which changes the keys. You go to WindowsUpdate and get the latest security fix, and all of a sudden, you can't go to your online banking website until they add that key. As the years go by, more and more security patches, service packs and whatnot get released, and the number of unique Windows kernel/application hashes out there in the wild gets higher and higher. Website operators will have to maintain a list of these hashes if they want to "authorize" the host. People are not going to do this!

Owners of current 98, 2000, and XP boxes also aren't going to buy a new computer to run a new Windows DRM (because that's how most people upgrade, and the current machines probably won't have the power anyway.)

Likewise, people aren't going to be thrilled to buy a new CD or DVD player. So if they change CSS or start encrypting audio CDs, it's likely that people will object. If you buy a CD and can't play it in your car, or you buy a movie and can't watch it at all, you're not going to be a satisfied customer.

Re:Already tried...?

[Brandybuck]

Sure, you'd be perfectly free to do so. However you would be locked out of the real internet. Your new "freenet" would not have access to any of the millions of existing websites.

Nonsense! Linux and *BSD would instantly implement freenet2inet bridges, enable them by default, and 90% of the ISPs would have it running for you within six months.

Re:Already tried...?

[Brandybuck]

About the routers. I'd reckon that it would be horrible if an ISP used this, but they won't.

Of course they won't! Considering the prices for Cisco routers no ISP in their right mind is going to ship one free-with-one-year-signup to their customers :-)

Re:Already tried...?

[Brandybuck]

All the better reason for us to begin starting Linux (and open source) focused ISPs now.

Why Linux? What's wrong with FreeBSD, which has a huge presence among ISPs? Not everything that is Free and Open is "Linux". And even if you correct yourself and admit all free operating systems into your mix, why leave out the Mac users? Won't they get just as screwed by this as everyone else? Or what about the shops running Solaris, IRIX or HP-UX? Stop imagining the world as consisting only of Windows and Linux.

Frankly, I want an ISP that is NOT "focused" on ANY particular operating system. And if you're smart, so will you.

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Nope. There's at least two problems.

(1) The data could all be Trusted Computing encrypted.
(2) If the internet backbone is all running Trusted Computing they could all refuse to connect to any non-compliany system, and any compliant system would itself refuse to connect to any non-compliant system. Such enforment would then perpetuate itself all the way out to the edge of the net.

It could be a bit tricky throughly barring any such link without excessively crippling ordinary net-aware applications, but it certinly is possible to bar such a link.

And even if you could establish such a link, it could/would be crippled in any number of ways. And an increasing percentage of all websites and all adata and all software would be encrypted. Even if you could reach a website though such a link, you'd just get encrypted garbage.

If the Trusted Computing inititive doesn't get exterminated then it's all merely a matter of time. A few years for all desktops to switch over, and then the internet infrastructure can switch over and make it mandatory. The president's Cyber Security advisor is advocating exactly that, and I have read numerous UN documents directly or indirectly advocating such a result. They all think it's a GoodThing.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Brandybuck]

So we just encrypt our data, package it, and tunnel it. I really don't think these Cisco routers are going to be up to the task of analyzing just exactly what each packet is intended for. They'll be busy enough just looking up keys. Heck we could even setup a system of P2P-like "trusted" onramps.

Of course we could all just use VPNs and save ourselves the trouble.

Nah, don't bother replying. If you truly believe that you're screwed no matter what, then you probably are. But some of us aren't going to bend over without a fight, and we don't need you telling us it's hopeless.

Re:Already tried...?

[jimicus]

Where does this leave alternative architectures? Apple Macs? AFAICT they'll either have to license MS technology or be left by the wayside.

Many businesses have various weird & wonderful legacy systems connected to the Internet for various reasons. What happens there? Or will "Business" ISPs make an exception?

Since there won't be any AV or other security tools on these systems (after all, there's no market for them in a "trusted" environment), what happens when the first bug in this system is found and exploited?

Just a few thoughts. I suppose the worst case is that MS will wind up controlling the Internet and everything on it. Given their previous conduct, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the business plan.

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

we don't need you telling us it's hopeless

I'm not saying it's hopeless.

I spend a lot of effort trying to stop Trusted Computing. That involves many different elements. Part of it is educating people who know nothing about it. Part of it is attempting to convert Trusted Computing advocates. But there is another important group of people I reach out to - people who know about Trusted Computing, and know how nasty it is, but they think it's so horrendous that there is no possible way it could succeed.

The surest way to lose a fight is to believe there is no need to fight.

It is hopless *if there is no public backlash against it*.

Without that, they can simply start shipping such machines and installing such machines and more and more software will be unusable without such a machine, and more and more files will be unusable without such a machine, and more and more websites will block you out without such a machine, and ultimately we be be denied any internet access at all without such a machine. Without a public backlash there is nothing you and I can do to save ourselves. We will be forced to sumbit, or we won't be able to use a computer at all.

I really don't think these Cisco routers are going to be up to the task of analyzing

No, you missunderstand these routers. It's not about analizing packets. When you first connect they verify that you are doing so with a Trusted machine. If you aren't, then you do not get a connection at all. You can't encrypt and tunnel squat without a connection.

Not only that, but the router can require you to be running specific and unalterable software. The router can refuse to accept any packets that are not originating through that specific software. That software is effectively a firewall running on your machine. That firewall restricts what you may transmit. That firewall restricts what software of yours is permitted to transmit data at all, that firewall restricts what data you may receive, and that firewall restricts what software of yours may receive any of that data.

If 90% of the public has a Trusted Computer then ISP's can install these routers at will. If ISP's install these routers then you and I are fuxored.

We need the public to refuse to buy these machines.

The problem is that there is absolutely no rational reason NOT to accept a Trusted machine. A Trusted Machine can do absolutely everything a non-Trusted machine an do. It's like refusing to buy a computer with speakers - you might as well accept the machine with speakers and just not use them.

P.S.
I probably will not be able to reply for at least 3 days, but I will definitely read any reply

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Where does this leave alternative architectures?

It is possible to create a Trusted version of any architecture. The issue is getting it certified by the relevant Trust Authorities. A Trusted version of Linux is already in the works, and there is no doubt that Apple could created a Trusted Mac. Those systems are common enough that at least some Trust Authorities will approve them, probably enough to get internet access. But they will still get locked out of a lot of websites and a lot of files simply because they aren't numerous for many publishers to bother acknowledging/approving them.

various weird & wonderful legacy systems

Even if you went to the effort of making a Trusted version, good luck getting it certified.

Getting such obsolete and insecure legacy systems off the net will be billed as a GoodThing. [sarcasm] We must secure out National Internet Infractucture angainst Viruses and Terrorist Attack. We must Protect The Children, and such insecure systems could be used to distribute KiddyPorn. [/sarcasm]

I suppose the worst case is that MS will wind up controlling the Internet and everything on it.

If Trusted Computing succeeds, quite possible. The system is elaborately designed to allow any computer and any OS to be made Trusted, but the way things will actually function will massively tilt the playing field in favor of the dominant system (Microsoft Windows), and it will be virtually impossible for any new competitor to ever appear, there would be zero content accessible to any new system no matter how compliant it is. The market would be restricted to existing players - Microsoft, Apple, Linux, BSD, maybe one or two others - and everyone but Microsoft will be second-class citizens at best. They will probably die off pretty fast from lack of content and lack of access and lack of interoperability. And Microsoft gets to blame it all on "normal market forces". Microsoft doesn't have to lift a finger to attack. Publishers and websites simply won't bother granting access to such alternatives.

P.S.
I probably won't be able to reply for at least 3 days, but I definitly will read any reply.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[jimicus]

You're right that MS wouldn't need anything other than "normal market forces" to kill off alternative technology.

But they don't actually need to. A few strategically placed patents, sufficient websites demanding a "Trusted" system and BANG! You have to contribute to Microsoft's coffers by licensing their technology, regardless of whether or not you use their operating system.

Re:Already tried...?

[Abcd1234]

How so? You write a piece of software on a "trusted" computer which acts as a transparent proxy. It accepts requests on one side, and then forwards them to the other, making it look like the requests came from itself. Thus, any upstream router will see the traffic came from a "trusted" computer and pass it on.

Hey, wait a sec... I just described NAT...

I suppose the only problem with this plan is if you can't install said proxying software on the "trusted" computer in the first place...

Re:Already tried...?

[Anonymous Coward]

But right now I have a valid contract with my provider, which does not require me to run some specific hardware and I would refuse to sign any such terms.

And this has already been done too. I ordered DSL from SBC after being assured that I could run my firewall and Linux stations on it. However, when the stuff was delivered and I set it up, it turned out that it would ONLY run on ONE Windows machine with their special software (more than 1 Gbyte of bloatware/spyware) and the install software proceeded to upgrade me to IE 6.0 WITHOUT ASKING. Now, the only reason they took it back without charging me their damned $200 cancellation fee was because I recorded the gal on the phone telling me that I could run my firewall and multiple Linux computers on this DSL. Tech support told me directly that that was NOT the case.

I now have my DSL through a small ISP in the area at 1.5 Mbps and they just don't give a damn what I run as long as I pay the bill! (not the Bill!)

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

(1) Any "secure" data will still be encrypted and unreadable (more and more websites will be completely "secure" and encrypted).
(2) You can be forced to run a "firewall", and the Trusted router will refuse any packets they do not originate trough your firewall. This firewall can restrict what data you may send and what applications may send it. It can also restrict what data you may receive and what software may receive it.

The firewall could refuse to talk to any non-Trusted application thus killing your idea, but such a restriction might be too oppressive for them to implement. Or at least not for quite some time.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Total_Wimp]

I have a question about DRM. If you are forbidden from making more than a limmited number of copies of, say, your music files, then doesn't that prevent you from upgrading your computer without effectively destroying your music library? Even if you kept your old computer around on a network just to get access to the files, aren't you prevented from ever really haveing all your music in one place (assuming you don't keep that old computer forever)?

I ask this because it seems like using DRM would make every music "purchase" actually more of a limited-use rental aggreement. I upgrade my computer equipment quite often compared to the average person, but even the average person is going to find themselves pretty unhappy if they have to re-buy all their music every 3 years.

I understand iTunes will let you burn a disc, but can you copy your collection from your old powerbook to a new one without a loss in quality? How about copying your Windows Media purchased music?

I know this is probably not the best place to ask these questions, but I just opened an iTunes account and y'all are haveing this great DRM discussion and, well, can ya help a brother out?

TW

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

There are countless different DRM systems, so there's no single definitive answer. In most cases, yeah, you wind up screwed. Upgrading to a new computeris generally a major issue.

I was specificly focusing on Trusted Computing in my last post. While Trusted Computing has a mechanism for upgrading to a new computer, there are some MAJOR issues with it. First of all you are only permitted to 'migrate' to a new computer with an identical model of Trust chip from the same manufacturer. This means that if you just buy a random computer it will probably not match and can't migrate - you're moderately screwed in that you need to go buy another (compatible) machine if you want to migrate. So you need to plan your upgrade purchase in advance and your options limited. It also means that if they come out with a new model of Trust chip (which is inevitable) and stop making the old model then you are absolutely screwed and cannot migrate. In this case your data dies with your old computer.

They also specificlly mandate that data be irretrivable if your current Trust chip ever gets damaged/glitches. If the chip goes bad then you can't migrate - the vital data is effectively erased. You're totally screwed. Every program you installed and every media file you bought, they all die with the chip. You have to buy all of your programs again, you can't just re-install them. Oh yeah, and you need to buy the operating system again - you can't just re-install that either.

The Trusted Computing technical design specifications constantly focus on things that the owner is absolutely forbidden to be able to do, and repeatedly states situations when the owner's data must be irretrievable (effectively destroyed) despite the fact that all of the data is undamaged. It's all encrypted, you're just forbidden to get at it.

And this is what they want you to buy - to pay extra for even. However they don't want to risk the possibility that you might not want to buy it - they intend to deny you that option. They intend that every motherboard manufactured will have the Trust chip installed as a standard, and that the extra price will be silently rolled into the price of every machine.

And it gets worse. You effectively won't own your machine any more. If you try to modify anything important then that entire system of the computer locks you out. You have to run exactly what they give you and what they want you to run, or your computer pretty much won't work at all. Attempting to alter anything critical on your computer will effectively destroy your computer until you set it back the way it was before.

The good news is that you can fix all of the problems and and strip off the DRM and recover any lost data and defeat any and all 'security' if you rip open the Trust chip and read out your secret key with a microscope (you'd probably need to pay a pro to do this). The bad news is that they will therefore lobby congress (and succeed) in getting a law passed making this a crime. A truly dumb-ass law revoking your basic rights to own your own property. They'll put you in prison for looking at your own property under a microscope.

They are going to spend millions on advertizing and PR and spin to sell Trusted Computing as a GoodThing. They will sell it as protecting you from viruses, protecting you from hackers, protecting your privacy, yada yada yada. All half-truths at best and outright deception in most cases. You could get every claimed benefit with an identical system where you were allowed to know your key and had full control over yout computer. But they simply refuse to offer such a system because if you have actual control of your own computer then they can't enforce DRM and other abuses against you.

If the majority of the public simply accepts without complaint the new machines they will be handing out then over the next 3 ot 5 years it will become pretty much impossible not to submit. Non-compliant systems will become pretty much usless, unable to run any of the new software, unable to use any of the new files, and ultimately denied internet access. Either there will be a general public backlash against Trusted Computing or we're all screwed.

-

Re:Already tried...?

[Total_Wimp]

Thanks very much for the info. There was a part of this DRM stuff that I wasn't quite grasping. I realized there was an issue when I was required to put my cell phone's unique ID into an online form in order to get an unlock key for some Symbian software I was buying. It's actually a common practice now on for cell phone software. I realize that if I bought an upgrade phone I'd end up screwed out of the money I spent and was curious if that was what they were proposing for PCs as well.

The big differnce is that my cell phone software was pretty cheap relative to the cost of the phone or a phone upgrade, but some of the software I've purchaed for the PC is very expansive. In the case of my music collection, potentially extremely expensive if I were to buy it all online (I've only bought a few songs so far).

I think the consumer and IP owners are at an impass based on lack of trust. They don't trust us to not steal from them and we don't trust them not to screw us if they have the chance. It's literally a breakdown in our implied social contract. I'm not sure there's a technological solution.

TW

Re:Already tried...?

[Alsee]

Exactly.

Cell phones are giving a bit of a preview of what they intend to do with computers. We are seeing it first in phones becuase the people selling you the phone are intimately involved in any software you buy, thus they have a big motivation to provide you crippled hardware. Hardware that will help them leverage software profits.

Having the software tied to the specific phone is bad, but there's also another subtle effect. It is impossible you to modify that software if you don't like the way it works. Normally if there is something annoying enough about the software, or malicious, or anti-owner, sooner or later someone will simply code a fix and give it out. Even if you have no clue about software, someone can give you the fix and you can simply apply it as a patch. The fact that this is not only possible, but inevitable, that's a powerful incentive for them to make good non-malicious and pro-owner software in the fist place. With the patsh possibility locked out they can program the software they way THEY want and for their own benefit. Just to make up an example, they could program the phone to dial into their date/time server for a 50 cent surcharge to set the time, whereas it would be perfectly possible to program the phone to dial into the US Government's atomic clock date/time server for free.

It also means they can charge you to download ring-tones instead of letting you type in a ring-tone yourself for free. Possibly even a ring-tone you yourself wrote, and therefore one where you yourself are the copyright holder. And even if you are entering a ring-tone based on a pop-song, it would absolutely be fair use for you to type in those notes yourself. It's no different than if you were sitting at home with a flute and played the melody from a song you heard. It's a non-commercial private performance. Copyright doesn't even come into the picture. Copyright only becomes an issue when they offer to sell you ring-tones. By crippling the phone to prevent you from typing in a ring-tone, not only are they squeezing a profit out of you, but they are forcing it to become a copyright issue when it shouldn't be.

I think the consumer and IP owners are at an impass based on lack of trust.

Disclaimer - I'm about to rant rant rant on why our copyright law is fuxored.

Since when is the martplace supposed to be based on trust? It is supposed to be based on competition. On the public trying to get as much as it can for as little money as it can, and on the public fully expecting companies to try to make as much money as they can.

In my oppinion, the primary cause of the current copyright crisis is because for the past 20-odd years or so we have literally let the publishing industry write our copyright laws. I'm serious. Every peice of copyright law since at least 1976 has been almost entirely written by lawyers employed by the publishing industry.

Not only has that produced lopsided laws, but the Publishing industry does NOT actually represent the interests of authors. The RIAA tries to claim it is representing the artists, but that's a load of bull. They pull out that claim whenever it's convient for their purposes. Copyright is supposed to be a bargain between authors and the public. Publishers have absolutely NO legitimacy for input. We shouldn't be negotiating with the RIAA at all. GOOD copyright law is based solely on benefiting the public, and on benefiting the public through giving authors an incentive to create. Nothing else is a legitimate argument or justification for copyright.

The new "Intellectual Property" interpretation and viewpoint goes against the very foundation of our laws. It's an oxymoron. Information is not property. Proper copyright law is a good and beneficial thing, but it's not property. If you look back at the first 200 years of copyright law and other "IP" law, if you look back at the discussions surrounding the drafting of the constitution, and most importantly if you look

A bootloader?

[ObviousGuy]

Initializes the CPU, initializes the bus, initializes the hardware, dumps to OS.

Isn't that a bootloader? Is it special because it is burned into the ROM?

Re:A bootloader?

[ciroknight]

Not from how I understand it. This is actually saving a Kernel-Image onto the bios chip itself, therefore booting straight to the kernel from the chip, basically skipping the step of "BIOS tells HD to find MBR, then read the data from MBR to ram, execute MBR instruction". Or at least, that's how I understand it?

Re:A bootloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain how this would be different from XIP?

OG

Re:A bootloader?

[ciroknight]

Well, for starters if my understanding of eXecute In Place is holding, it's completely different. The ROM chip holds a compressed kernel, that's decompressed on the fly and used to start the system. The only thing this skips is the need to do a startup seek for harddrives, and that whole step of initalizing slow hardware (ie, Hard Disk platters). eXecute In Place is intented to simply run the program natively, ie uncompressed kernel image sitting in ram, so it can just be thrown straight into the processor and executed. The difference is slight, but none-the-less important.

Re:A bootloader?

[ciroknight]

Errr... I really need to re-read what I write. It's a different THEORY, but similar execution.. eXecution In Place is speed via giving the computer EXACTLY what it needs to run, whereas LinuxBIOS is simply skiping the step of harddrive start. Completely different in the fact they're starting from opposite ends of the same problem, but slight in the fact that they've reached an almost common ground.

Re:A bootloader?

[AxelTorvalds]

I have developed a commercial set-top box that used ideas from LinuxBIOS. It's kind of a bootloader, like there are on non-x86 machines.

How it typically works is you develop a kernel with a small foot print. The LinuxBIOS guys are really sane about things, there is a few lines of assembly which is just about enough code to start running C code. After that the gist of it is C with some assembly macros. There isn't anything too complex, we're talking about outp mostly. There isn't anything too secret here, it's just that booting a PC is not documented really well. Some BIOS vendors have software that does runtime function with system managment interrupts. DRM will be something like that. Supposedly and there have been discussions about it on the LinuxBIOS list, Phoenix and company do some hardware error checking and such and that's why they are so slow but some of the LinuxBIOS folks think that they don't do that and that the code is so complex and has so much legacy that it does a bunch of extra crap that it doesn't need to.

That code does enough to turn on memory, it may do some checking now, when I looked at it last there wasn't a ton of integrity checking code. Light up a few other components, like VGA. Then copy a kernel from flash in to memory (think of it as a slightly tweaked bzImage) At that point you can pretty much jump to the start of the kernel and execute it. The kernel doesn't use BIOS for most device IO so it knows how to spin up drives and light up the rest of the hardware.

Now how we did it and understood the goal of LinuxBIOS to be was we had an initrd that the kernel from flash would load and execute. Said initrd would look at the drives, look at some other variables, authenticate the system, possibly do a fsck on the disks if needed and then locate a kernel on the disk. After locating that kernel it would use kexec, now called fastboot, and replace the kernel in memory. The idea was that we could upgrade kernels on disks without changing flash.

It works very well and has been incredibly reliable. We can get in to kernel space in a few seconds. Subsequently, if it's a settop box type device, it could download a brain from cable or satellite. It could rebuild itself if needed. You could have diagnostic code in there for manufacturing, etc, whatever you want. Pretty much only limited by flash size and memory.

I know that they now and do other things like boot windows and such, at which point LinuxBIOS is potentially a serious threat to Phoenix and company, the BIOS is an expensive piece of the computer.

I've been toying around with some linuxbios type projects. Since disk space is so insanely cheap and disks are so big anymore, you could set aside a backup partition, easily do a really quick backup daily and then weekly do a backup of that to long term media from "BIOS land" regardless of the operating system. Or you could have something like snapshots of your system, maybe a clean install, a configured system, a backup, a different OS or something like that and then all from "BIOS Space" pick them at boot time and have it restore them. Something like that, I have always wanted backup support at the BIOS level.

Re:A bootloader?

[FooAtWFU]

Nice trick. Correct yourself from an earlier post and grab double the karma! :D

Re:A bootloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

kinda like a mac? (ppc) (and alpha?)

Re:A bootloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have developed a commercial set-top box that used ideas from LinuxBIOS. It's kind of a bootloader, like there are on non-x86 machines.

So you're saying it's a deriviative work then? ;-) I'm sure they'd appreciate any feedback or "ideas" you can send back their way too.

Re:A bootloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Isn't that a bootloader?

Nope. The bootloader loads the OS and jumps to it. It does not:

* Initializes the CPU
* Initializes the bus
* Initializes the hardware

And, if you think about it, initialize hardware can be a very difficult task.

Re:A bootloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many embedded bootloaders do exactly those things, replacing the BIOS altogether. The most obvious and available loader that does this is the loader for the Intel XScale which you can get with their reference platform (you've got one, right?). It sets up all interrupts, scans all hardware and initializes it, creates the memory map, loads the OS, then finally jumps to the OS passing all the interrupt and memory mapping data to the OS.

But hey, x86 PC architecture is all that exists, eh?

Motherboard support

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this have any chance of being taken up by a motherboard manuafacturer by default or is this a aftermarket project ? in which case without being installed by a manufacturer no-one is going to even contemplate wiping their "working" bios for an unknown 3rd party of no significant benefit to them

Re:Motherboard support

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the article says you can get it on MBs from Tyan.

Re:Motherboard support

[zakezuke]

in which case without being installed by a manufacturer no-one is going to even contemplate wiping their "working" bios for an unknown 3rd party of no significant benefit to them

I'm not sure the current license fee for a bios... but this would be of some great benifit to the lowest bid type computer makers like e-machines. I could also see someone re-branding other motherboards purchaced in bulk, like we see with PC chips motherboards, and saving money using a free-bios. Not like I haven't seen pirated bios's before... this way it would be legit.

Re:Motherboard support

[EzInKy]

Will this have any chance of being taken up by a motherboard manuafacturer by default or is this a aftermarket project ? in which case without being installed by a manufacturer no-one is going to even contemplate wiping their "working" bios for an unknown 3rd party of no significant benefit to them.

I was really surprised/disappointed to see that Gigabyte motherboards weren't being actively tested. You would think their DualBios would be perfect for a project like this because you would have a rescue image right on the board.

If it is for a lack of testers, I've got two 7V*** boxes at home and might be willing to give it a go. If it is because they are not cooperating, guess it will be Tyan boards when I replace them.

Re:Motherboard support

[garroo]

Why not? I have changed perfectly good working BIOS's before, simply because there was an update.

All you need is the original on a floppy disk, and you should be able to re-flash. And on some boards, you now have the backup flash, (dual bios) so in case one chip doesn't run, it will fall back to the other.

On the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

This might actually result in a higher quality BIOS in the next few years

Re:On the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

And if I ran windows I might be able to appreciate it from the daily bounces...

Clustering

[Neo-Rio-101]

The reason why Things like LinuxBIOS are important is because having a PC boot with the Linux kernel is not only a cool trick, but it saves people who build clusters a heck of a lot of money on Hard Drives and CD-ROM drives, when a cluster node only really needs a mainboard, CPU, and RAM.

Maybe with faster, bootable USB on motherboards in future, and cheaper flash RAM, flashing the BIOS to run Linux will seem a little less necessary.

Maybe there's some other use for Linux in the BIOS, but someone will have to teach me as to what that is.

Re:Clustering

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do basically the same thing if your mobo has a PXE BIOS. One of the boot options is "network".

Re:Clustering

[Hiro Antagonist]

On top of that, it can make life easier for admins, because a LinuxBIOS could be configured to allow a serial console with full hardware control, just like a Sun box does.

Re:Clustering

[DA-MAN]

I run six large clusters, only one of them was benchmarked and is on the top500 (under 200) but all are relatively the same size and processing power. We change a great many things from build to build. Kernel tweaks, updates, etc. This is for optimizing the system to the code that we run. And although typically our clusters are on a physically separate network, the worst enemy is the one within, thus our machines tend to be patched for severe security holes.

I've not looked much into LinuxBIOS as of yet aside from the Linux Journal article. It doesn't really give much information on what it really does. I mean does LinuxBIOS initialize hardware and then load my kernel for regular operations? Does it load an nfs exported root partition and use that as the system disk? How are kernel updates done if it is the latter.

In addition our clusters all have at least some local storage, using the network for everything means that you have a cluster with a big point of failure. It also means that there is no swap space.

Cluster nodes, in my experience, do need more than just a mainboard, cpu's and ram.

Re:Clustering

[Steffan]

• "it saves people who build clusters a heck of a lot of money on Hard Drives and CD-ROM drives, when a cluster node only really needs a mainboard, CPU, and RAM."

• "Maybe with faster, bootable USB on motherboards in future, and cheaper flash RAM, flashing the BIOS to run Linux will seem a little less necessary."

You can do this now. I have multiple machines booting over the network, none of which have any local storage whatsoever. Just use a PXE based bootloader, or a motherboard with a BIOS you can flash and you can boot the kernel over the net and NFS-mount root.

It's great for tying a media box to a raid array without having all those pesky hard drives near your TV.

Re:Clustering

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That's the same reason the people running the project think it's important. That's why they started the project. In fact, the entire front page of the site is about clustering.

Re:Clustering

[oob]

because a LinuxBIOS could be configured to allow a serial console with full hardware control, just like a Sun box does.

Great point. This is functionality sorely missed in the vast majority of x86 systems for everyone that needs to run headless servers.

The Remote Serial Console HOWTO is a superb document, but following it only provides you with a system administrable via serial console once the bootloader (LILO, Grub) has been initialised. This means that everything before the bootloader is not accessible via serial console.

Having to install a video card and attach a monitor and keyboard to box in order to modify BIOS settings is major pain in the arse.

Re:Clustering

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of cluster builders already save money on hard drives and cd rom drives. We have a cluster right now that uses a PXE enabled ethernet card to download an Etherboot image. This boots the system with a ramdisk that has a minnimal system and a few small things we don't want on NFS filesystems. Most stuff is NFS mounted. This takes about 40MB of ram, including at least 10 MB of free space in the ramdisk. This could be shaved down.

Re:Clustering

[DeathPenguin]

>>I mean does LinuxBIOS initialize hardware and then load my kernel for regular operations?

It initializes the necessary hardware and then loads any "payload." The payload can be anything--A kernel image if you have enough space on your flash part, a bootloader to boot from over a network or local disk, etc.

Currently the Lightning cluster (Ranked at #6 @ top500.org) uses LinuxBIOS to load a bootloader (Etherboot or FILO, I forget which) which then loads a kernel and BProc. No spinning hard disk, no CD-ROM, just an added solid state flash device on the IDE bus containing a bproc-patched kernel with a driver for the interconnect and bpslave. The rest of the operating system for slave nodes, which is only a few kilobytes, is pulled down over the network (Not necessarily ethernet) and loaded into RAM.

>> How are kernel updates done if it is the latter.

Since all the hardware is same for a cluster like Lightning, a kernel update can be done pretty easily with the bpcp (BProc copy) command if you have a new kernel sitting on the master node. I haven't used it in a while, but I think the command goes something like: bpcp vmlinuz 0-N:/boot/vmlinuz, where N is the last node. The syntax is very similar to RSH/SSH, but you can specify as many nodes as you want so you don't need any shell scripts to count up for you. I guess you might also need to tell bpsh to mount a boot partition, depending on how you have it set up.

If you have your kernel in the BIOS, then you have to rebuild and reflash. With the magic of BProc, you don't even need to put the BIOS flashing utility (See their flash_and_burn utility) on the slave node. Just run bpsh 0-N flash_rom newbios.rom. LinuxBIOS even provides fallback functionality so if something goes horribly wrong during this process or the new image doesn't work it can automatically load an old image that does work.

These are just a few of many possible configurations, of course. There are no strict guidelines as to how a LinuxBIOS system must be used. It's extremely flexable, which is one of its main appeals.

Re:Clustering

[F2F]

you have 'multiple' machines, LANL has thousands. you try netbooting a 1024-node cluster and tell me how your nfs and tftp servers fare...

or try doing that in an embedded part of an airplane which needs to guarantee that in the event of an error it will come back to initial 'safe' state in a certain amount of ( 1) seconds (well, sometimes it just keeps rebooting in the 'safe' state but that happens even without linuxbios to help it).

remember, linuxbios solves much more, and general, problems than having a few machines with pxe on them and an NFS server do.

oh, and linuxbios is 4 years old. back then not many motherboards came with pxe.

Re:Clustering

[Pejorian]

but it saves people who build clusters a heck of a lot of money

Ya! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of computers running this BIOS!!

Moderators: (tired-old-running-joke-sigh)

Re:Clustering

[Sabalon]

Dell PowerEdges now come with the ability to redirect everything during POST to the serial port.

It works, though my brain has a hard time remembering all the keystrokes to do stuff from a terminal, so I just use the KVM over IP solution :)

Re:Clustering

[fm6]

Inquiring minds want to know more about your system!

boot time of no benefit?

[abscondment]

if it increased boot time significantly, it could be of great benefit--think of a webhosting company that guarantees less than a certain number of minutes of downtime each year. shaving off seconds on each reboot could save them $$$.

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

so i can cut bios boot time from 5secs to 3 wheee!

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[mandolin]

if it increased boot time significantly, it could be of great benefit

Hope you meant "decreased". Ontopic, one useful place I could see LinuxBIOS going would be custom embedded boards. Of course, they probably have that in a FAQ somewhere.

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>if it increased boot time significantly...
Microsoft could sue for prior art.

What? You meant to write "decreased?" Nevermind. ;)

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[FFFish]

If you want to increase your boot time, simply purchase Windows, Office, and Norton, and then install a bunch of task-tray doohickies. Oh, and do this on an old Pentium-90 box.

I guarantee you'll have increased boot times, measured in godawful long minutes.

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[CycoChuck]

Actually, if you really want to increase boot time load Win 98 on a 486SX25 with 16MB of ram. Then load Office, and Norton, and a bunch of task-tray doohickies. It might take a few days to boot, especially if you have one of those hard drive controllers that has a seperate bios.

Re:boot time of no benefit?

[micromoog]

I think he meant "deceased", which is what will happen to your boot process if you muck with your BIOS uncarefully.

How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[Adolph_Hitler]

Ok, first why should I switch from the current BIOS I have to this one, make the case. Saying the word Linux is not making the case and neither is saying Open source. Is it better technology? Second, ok say I want to do this, how do I go about doing it? That site needs better instructions, it needs to explain the technology better. Simply put, their website SUCKS.

It sounds like a good idea but how does it work in practice? How about pictures? Benchmarks, test results.

Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[cgenman]

Ok, first why should I switch from the current BIOS I have to this one, make the case.

You shouldn't. Ok, that's unnecessarily harsh, but as it stands right now LinuxBIOS is primarily for people who are between very and highly technically inclined... Kind of like linux was shortly after it's release. That's why their website "SUCKS," because this isn't yet ready for the KDE crowd. You'd have to be comfortable finding the status of your motherboard, downloading and compiling the appropriate files, reflashing your onboard FlashROM, and other nasty, dirty things. I wouldn't consider myself qualified to get their best documented system up and running unless I was between jobs, and even then I consider it iffy.

Linux BIOS as it stands is useful for a few specific things: Building clusters and building robots. Any embedded system running on linux on a traditional motherboard can be sped up significantly by using Linux BIOS. But it does require quite a bit of work and knowledge to get it running... If you want a computer pre-flashed with LinuxBIOS, you can purchase one off the shelf, but I would be hesitant to try and build one without a lot of time and / or skill.

It isn't that the LinuxBIOS people don't want that kind of end-user friendliness, it's just that the project is still in the mode of getting things working at all, let alone in an easy fashion.

Secondly, as you might have figured out, it is not a drop-in BIOS replacement. Your computer enters the boot phase and exists the other side with Linux running. You'll not get Windows to run directly on that, and I'd be surprised if it ran virtually (as the BIOS windows is expecting doesn't exist). If anyone here has experience running Windows on a LinuxBIOS, please let us know.

None of this is to say that the goals of the project are bad. Imagine being able to boot to command line in 3 seconds! You could start an ssh session before your monitor was done de-gaussing. Attach a 4 line LED display to one of these motherboards, and you would have a great tool for debugging network problems. Or just speed things up significantly, and spend more time doing what you are supposed to be doing, with the added bonus of being able to shut down your computer when you are done (gasp!). It just needs a lot more work, and a lot of developer support. I'm glad to see it posted to Slashdot, as the exposure might net a few more eager helpers.

Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[Hast]

There is a good article on it from an old Linux-magazine. It explains how to make it work without EEPROM burners and such. Note that this involves removing your BIOS while the computer is running. Needless to say it's not something a person who is unused to playing with hardware and software should attempt.

As to your other questions. It's "just" a way to boot Linux really-really fast. You'll have Linux booted in about the same time a normal POST process.

Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[alex_tibbles]

Linux BIOS also offers an alternative to the next-generation bloatware-DRM-enabled BIOSes that will control your computer.

Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[RKBA]

"It explains how to make it work without EEPROM burners and such"

EPROM/EEPROM/FLASH, etc., burners are cheap (as little as $219) so I don't see why needing one would be such a big deal. I have an EPROM programmer at home I purchased several years ago for around $99 from DigiKey. Doesn't everyone own their own EPROM burner? ;-) My only concern would be whether or not the FLASH memory chip containing the BIOS is socketed. If it isn't socketed and it accidentally gets trashed, an EPROM/FLASH programmer wouldn't be much help unless you are very good with a desoldering tool.

Re:How can I flash my AwardBIos to run this?

[Hast]

If you read that linked PDF you'll find that what they suggest is that you add a ZIF socket to the BIOS socket. That way you can easily, and safely boot your PC and change Flash-chips to a new one upon which you install LinuxBIOS.

They also suggest that you use a slightly larger than necessary (memory wise) chip and provide instructions on how to put a /root dir on there with necessary tools. That way you have a miniture system in the BIOS, pretty neat if you ask me. (A pain to update, but I assume that it's mainly there as a backup if the harddrives fail and such.)

Come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, the LinuxBIOS is as unnecessary as the Phoenix email reading BIOS. In modern computing, all you need is for the BIOS to initialize a few things, then pass of control to the OS. Who cares about all that other crap that your OS ignores anyway?

Re:Come on!

[greasewolf]

You will see in the future why it is really needed when trusted computing os knocks on your door ...

Re:Come on!

[DeathPenguin]

Did you RTFA? LinuxBIOS is a BIOS, nothing more, nothing less. They're not trying to put a whole OS on the flash chip, just enough to boot a real OS. In fact, the BIOS is practically designed to be as non-interactive and minimalistic as possible since Linux does in fact take care of much of its own configuration. As Linus commented in setup.S, "We don't need no steenking BIOS anyway (except for the initial loading :-)."

LinuxBIOS does that initial loading.

Re:Come on!

[shiftless]

RTFA. That's one of the main *points* of the LinuxBIOS - to eliminate cruft in existing BIOSes. It initializes the bare essentials, then loads the OS. It's called the "Linux"BIOS because it uses a stripped down, gutted Linux kernel with a few code additions to do all the work.

Re:Come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, it says regular PC BIOS could do what they needed to for clustering. Hence, they made LinuxBIOS. Duh!

I know, you read the pictures and look at the article, right?

Grub

[Trashman]

aside from grub being "just a boot loader", Wouldn't it make sense if grub was somehow moved into the bios?

Re:Grub

[ciroknight]

Fuck grub, this is moving the whole kernel into flash-ram. This is to save the step of having to connect to the hard drive until when it's actually needed to run software, which can be done WHILE the system is booting the kernel, instead of before-hand. And as we know, in the computer world, multitasking is a good way of speeding up things.

;)

Re:Grub

[dbIII]

aside from grub being "just a boot loader", Wouldn't it make sense if grub was somehow moved into the bios?

That would involve someone writing some documentation for grub that says something more useful than "grub rools!".

Also this does somewhat more than act as a bootloader.

Chipset Support

[Fiz Ocelot]

Certainly sounds like this is something to look into, support sounds rather good and expanding at a nice pace. If it works very well with things like overclocking too, it could really hit mainstream hardware enthusiasts and more rapid growth.

Fifty supported motherboards are in the source tree, but we have found that many motherboards are so similar that a LinuxBIOS for one motherboard can work on another. Companies build code for one motherboard, run it on another motherboard and do not always get around to telling us.

It really is amazing...

[ZuperDee]

I think it is really amazing how many people here on Slashdot are just so eager to post comments that they obviously don't even bother to read the actual article.

If some of you people had read the article, for example, you'd notice some important points being made, such as, "From what we can see, the two factors in our success were competition and the creation of a market. Competition gave us a wide variety of choices as to motherboard, chipset and CPU. Once there was a reasonable market, vendors were concerned about being left out."

I don't know about any of you, but I think the creation of an open source "market" is EXACTLY what has enabled the success of open source products like Linux in the first place.

It was also what enabled the success of the Wintel architecture, if you think about it. At the time the original IBM PC was released, it was virtually a foreign idea to IBM--many people at the time were asking the question, "how on EARTH could IBM possibly release a machine based on open specifications and parts with a straight face?" Let us not forget that at the time, IBM desperately needed to get ANY kind of microcomputer on the market ASAP, for fear that Apple and others might get firmly entrenched. Once that thinking took hold, IBM practically had no choice but to hope and pray that their Big Name would keep them at the forefront. As we know, companies like Compaq came along and proved them wrong, and the rest is history.

The point is, I wonder why things like chipsets are still so closely guarded secrets. Can you people imagine what the world would be like if Intel had made the x86 CPUs with a proprietary, closely-guarded SECRET ISA, that you could only program for if you signed an NDA? If Intel had done that, Linux probably wouldn't even exist!!

I sometimes have this feeling Microsoft would do ANYTHING to go back in history and try to get all the laws of our country re-written and the market changed so this kind of all-secret world I speak of could exist.

In the end, the markets for products, be it open OR closed, occur because someone created that market. I think it is high time someone created an "open source" chipset, myself. But that's just me. If you people want all things to be open, stop talking about it and complaining about closed-source, proprietary things, and DO SOMETHING about it.

Re:It really is amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can you people imagine what the world would be like if Intel had made the x86 CPUs with a proprietary, closely-guarded SECRET ISA, that you could only program for if you signed an NDA?"

Yeah, other systems would have been adopted more readily, and we'd be using machine architectures that aren't 20 year old hack-upon-hack.

Re:It really is amazing...

[WarWizard]

Try http://www.opencores.org/ they have many open source hardware projects that you could program an FPGA with.

Re:It really is amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments from people who have read the article are all down there at the end of the page with low moderation scores.

Re:It really is amazing...

[StateOfTheUnion]

The point is, I wonder why things like chipsets are still so closely guarded secrets. Can you people imagine what the world would be like if Intel had made the x86 CPUs with a proprietary, closely-guarded SECRET ISA, that you could only program for if you signed an NDA? If Intel had done that, Linux probably wouldn't even exist!!

Not that surprising really . . . I think that instead of open source "market" one might say open standard.

IBM's PC was an open standard and that's a large part of the reason why it dominated the market . . .

It's similar to the VHS VCR. Betamax had better quality but VHS was an open standard, Betamax disappeared as the market became dominated by VHS VCR's. Sony (the creator of Betamax) gave up and joined the VHS crowd. Similar arguments against closed standards can be made against zip drives and microchannel and a host of other things. (Note that zip licensed their technology to others . . . but at that point it was too little to late, the CD rom crushed them from a storage capacity side and they never became mainstream enough to replace the floppy)

It took years for competitors to copy the PC, and now, perhaps the BIOS will soon be commoditized much to the chagrin of the closed standard folks. To stay ahead of the game we may see the BIOS companies try to put more general features (good) in their BIOS's or partner with an 800 pound gorilla (like Microsoft) and try to tie future releases and features of their BIOS to a Microsoft operating system (bad). If the technology can be copied or duplicated with "relative" ease (relative = an amount of effort less than the potential upside) it probably doesn't make sense to create a closed standard . . . unless you're an 800 pound gorilla (Microsoft) . . . and even then, you have to stand on your toes (Linux-piranha).

Re:It really is amazing...

[pseudochaotic]

I sometimes have this feeling Microsoft would do ANYTHING to go back in history and try to get all the laws of our country re-written and the market changed so this kind of all-secret world I speak of could exist.

Well, if this had happened, Bill Gates never would have started experimenting with computers, and Microsoft wouldn't even exist. Keep in mind that Microsoft started small, just like Linux.

Re:It really is amazing...

[niko9]

You want an open source chipset? Here.

Re:It really is amazing...

[DrSkwid]

Betamax disappeared

s/disappeared/went on to dominate the tv video camera and edit suite market/

Re:It really is amazing...

[vidarh]

Of course IBM didn't "release a machine based on open specifications and parts with a straight face". At first they fought tooth and nail to keep control over the PC market and keep clone makers out of it. It was first AFTER the clones were already available, thanks to massive amounts of reverse engineering, that IBM started seeing the light. Remember the PS/2? IBM's attempt to regain control of the PC market by shutting competitors out. Unfortunately for IBM, customers preferred choice.

Re:It really is amazing...

[SpaceLifeForm]

I sometimes have this feeling Microsoft would do ANYTHING to go back in history and try to get all the laws of our country re-written and the market changed so this kind of all-secret world I speak of could exist.

Just a feeling? Seems like that is happening today.

Re:It really is amazing...

[StateOfTheUnion]

Oops . . .you're absolutely right . . . I should have said "from the consumer market"

Re:It really is amazing...

[Brandybuck]

Similar arguments against closed standards can be made against zip drives

Except that it doesn't explain the poor showing of MO drives. Same size and price point, but with larger capacity and multiple vendors.

Woops!

[Sarojin]

I just installed Windows and it overwrote my BIOS!

Heres a picture

[sinkywinky]

It sounds like a good idea but how does it work in practice? How about pictures?

Heres a picture of linuxbios:
0001001010001000000100101001001000100100100100101
0010101001001000100100000100100101000100100100100
1001000100100100010000001001000100010000100110010
0101001001000100100100100101100100010000001010101
1000100100000100100000100101010010010010001001001

Re:Heres a picture

[Drantin]

And here I was expecting this to be something when run through a binary->ASCII converter like the one at http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php

A real picture of LinuxBIOS:
01001100011010010110111001110101011110 000100001001 0010010100111101010011

Re:Linux is the BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds kind of like Bull Shit (BS) from an Anonymous Coward (AC) persepctive.

Oh well, this is Slashdot (/.) and to be expected. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

What is the bios for?

[www.sorehands.com]

Are we looking for a bios to run straight to unix or a bios to load an operating system? Should we have a windows bios too?

If we start pushing linux bios, would we be pushing linux as Microsloth pushes Windows?

Re:What is the bios for?

[ciroknight]

The minute Microsoft pushes their crap into a bios chip is the minute I move to Apple computers. Mac's are better anyways [/flameoff]

LinuxBIOS really isn't for everyone. It's not as hardware agnostic as a typical harddrive based bootloader is, simply because a bios chip has a tiny amount of eeprom (256k). While this is suffiecient for an optimized system (cluster node, web server, invariant hardware, etc), it's really not good for a home user who'd love to throw his/her new radeon in and not have to insmod their driver everytime they bootup. It's also hell to recompile the kernel, as one false move and your bios is history.

One thing that may be beautiful: flash ram being used instead of current bios archetecture. Flash ram is cheap, and spacious, and can hold quite a large kernel-image. But this gets into more of what XIP is trying to do....

I understand your concerns of Linux becoming Microsoft-ish, and locking in people, but come on, it's just a BIOS image. Don't want it, go to the vendor's website, download the newest one, write it on. Of course this is more dangerous, but for that same reason, I don't believe we'll be seeing a huge push for LinuxBIOS any time soon.

Re:What is the bios for?

[DeathPenguin]

It's a BIOS to load an operating system. They've booted Linux, FreeBSD, Plan9, and even Windows 2000.

The trick is finding a bootloader that doesn't depend on legacy BIOS services.

Does it allow console access via serial port?

[whoever57]

If so, this is very valuable to data centers:

instead of hauling a monitor over to a machine that won't boot, they could remotely connect via a Portserver or similar. Much easier!

Re:Does it allow console access via serial port?

[whoever57]

Ah, to answer my own post, it looks like it does, for many motherboards

Re:Does it allow console access via serial port?

[pair-a-noyd]

Dear Santa, please read parent...

Thanks!

Re:Does it allow console access via serial port?

[drinkypoo]

There are many PCs with serial consoles. Basically every BIOS manufacturer offers a serial version of their "high end" BIOS with all the features turned on. I have a network engines roadster lx system upon which I run gentoo linux (sure would be nice to figure out how to use the LCD for something other than resetting the system or turning it on/off though) and it's got AMI bios (IIRC) and a serial console. It's slow, and it doesn't seem to work right with any terminal emulation, but it's basically functional. Then, I have grub set up for serial output, and then my linux kernel treats both serial and the actual console (I don't own a breakout box for its console connection though, I borrowed one to set it up) as the console, with console messages going only to the serial port.

Re:Does it allow console access via serial port?

[p3d0]

If only there were some way to answer that question by going to some kind of "web site" or something.

Re:Does it allow console access via serial port?

[chegosaurus]

Chalk one up for Sun. Serial access since year dot.

plug n play smp's

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the paper. Can't say I fully understand it all, but seems like this BIOS could lead to a form of personal computer that would be easily expandable as to adding processors. It was designed for clusters, yes,? Well... why not an upgradeable box that had slots that entire additional CPUs and & etc. built onto small cards would fit in? Just like adding more RAM when you need it/want it? Just was reading here the other day about the new nanoboards. Seems like a natural somehow...

zogger

Re:plug n play smp's

[mabinogi]

you can already hotplug CPUs on mainframe class machines - even Intel bassed ones.

But it's not a technology you're likely to see on the desktop anytime soon. Most people's PCs are not running anything so critical that they can't shut it down for a minute to add another CPU, and so no one would want to pay the extra for it.

Re:plug n play smp's

[Michael Hunt]

Would you like to tell us what the hell a 'mainframe-class' intel machine is?

Re:plug n play smp's

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these count?

Re:plug n play smp's

[Michael Hunt]

No. They're Itanium servers (which may or may not support hotplug CPUs.) They're not mainframes.

Re:plug n play smp's

[mabinogi]

A large multi processor machine that supports partitioning and virualisation allowing multiple different operating systems to run simultaneously, and supports dynamic allocation of resources (CPU, Memory, etc) to each partition.

Unisys, for example, have been using Intel processors in their machines for a long long time. They realised that the CPU was not their selling point, it was their archetectural experience. So they stopped making their own CPUs and started using Intel ones instead.

Finally, an admission...

[BeBoxer]

Finally, an admission that the hardware vendors claim of secret interfaces is often just BS:


One of the most common phrases we heard from chip vendors in the first few years was "we'll never tell you that." "That" being CPU information, chipset information, motherboard information or any combination of the three. The designs for these three systems constitute highly guarded secrets. It seems amazing, even now, that vendors are able to let us build a GPLed BIOS that by its nature exposes some of these secrets.

How was it possible for us to get this type of information? Simple, businesses are not charities. If there is no business case for releasing this information to us, they do not do it. If, however, there is a business case, then it happens?sometimes with astonishing speed.

Read that last paragraph again. The hardware vendors basically say "that's a secret" whether it really is or not. Unless you pay them, or show them that they are losing money, they won't even bother deciding if it's really something that has to be kept secret.

Re:Finally, an admission...

[bripeace]

how is it not secret?

if they keep it secret it's secret.. secret doesn't necesitate need

it's a secret until it's known to many...

Re:Finally, an admission...

[BeBoxer]

Yes, thank you for the english lesson. But it's obviously the [i]need[/i] for secrecy which is the whole issue. My point, which I thought was pretty clear, is that hardware companies often keep the documentation secret without bothering to determine if there is in fact any need for it. To the detriment of many of their customers I might add.

Re:Finally, an admission...

[k98sven]

Your innocence amazes me.

Re:Finally, an admission...

[Anonymous Coward]

using capitalistic laws:

when estimated dollars earned by keeping it secret < estimated dollars earned by revealing it and have feature(s) for free:
reveal it;

they don't go around keeping things secret for fun, companies are for profit.

Re:Finally, an admission...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll find that's true anywhere. Pick a kind of widget - be it a UPS, a sound card, a network card (wireless especially), or whatever. The biggest and fattest companies in the bunch usually won't help anyone but themselves, since they don't have to.

It's the small hungry ones who come up with programming kits, free development hardware, or even writing their own free code. They know that every user counts, so they go after the smaller markets.

This is not a new thing, unfortunately, and it still continues today. Unless the fat cats have someone inside who cares about free software, don't expect any help from them. Some of the more bastardly companies will actually come after the developers for "cracking their proprietary stuff". They'll claim shrinkwrap licenses protect them, or whatever, just to hassle you.

Re:Finally, an admission...

[Anonymous Coward]

it was a good point you made initially ... you did need the English lesson though

Re:Finally, an admission...

[TheRevenant]

This isn't contradictory. It's a business secret - ie. something that is in the company's interest to keep from being public knowledge.

But it's _their_ secret. They are free at any time to reevaluate the business need to keep that information confidential and reveal some or all of it to other parties.

Re:Christopher Lowell

[Anonymous Coward]

...heh heh

no.

just you...

-cl

Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[leandrod]

What I'd like to know is if it would be possible to overwrite a, say, Apple Power Macintosh beige OldWorld G3 with LinuxBIOS or OpenBIOS and thus get to use x86 SCSI and VGA adapters.

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about that, but for at least some of the VGA cards out there, you can re-flash the card and use in in a Mac w/o problems

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got that backwards. The real trick would be to use an x86 with LinuxBIOS and be able to boot into OS X. Now that would be cool...

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[BRTB]

Might be easier to find/dump Mac versions of the SCSI/VGA card BIOS and flash the card with it. Worked on an old Matrox Millennium I had...

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[leandrod]

> Might be easier to find/dump Mac versions of the SCSI/VGA card BIOS and flash the card with it.

Works on Matrox and 3dfx, but not ATi or nVidia.

And doesn't work on my Adaptec AHA-2940U.

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[istewart]

Does in fact work on ATi and (I believe) nVidia. I have a 64MB Radeon 7000 PCI meant for x86 flashed and working in a Power Mac.

Accelerate Your Mac has more info.

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[obirt]

Old World machines do not have flashable chips. You would have to unsolder the apple chips from the ROM DIMM and/or motherboard and replace them with something that is electronically eraseable.

FreeBIOS seems like a better choice.

The only reason mac pci cards are more expensive is because vendors CAN charge 4x as much and people will still pay it as not enough companies make it

Why mess with the system rom and option card rom at all? Unless you want to use your x86 SCSI or vGA card during the boot process where the firmware has control or to boot from them its not needed. set openfirmware to serial console and fire up X when you get to multiuser. Snootchie bootchies. There's no requirement of x86 nor open firmware fcode to use a card once the kernel is booted.

The larger problem is card makers cannot be bothered to do it right the first time. Hardware is often made to operate in either endian, if the card makers weren't spending all their time debugging obscure x86 BIOS issues they could probably spend a few hours and add fcode so it could work on Sun and Apple hardware.

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[spacefrog]

Actually in many cases, that works without even having to flash the card with the appropriate mac image, even in cases where the card was never designed to work in a mac, or even has a flashable firmware.

A lot of PCI cards that do not have any firmware, work just fine on a ppc/linux setup to begin with, even when the cards do not have any support in MacOS or OSX.

I have a realtek ethernet card and a generic AMD usb card in my oldworld 603e machine already.

In addition, a lot of cards that do have firmware will work as long as you do not care about the device being available from boot. I have an older matrox card and an adaptac 2940UW in my machine.

Both work just fine as long as I don't need them until the linux kernel takes over. With proper kernel parameters, the matrox card is even my console, I just don't see anything until the kernel is booting. Ditto, I boot and load kernel from a 250MB narrow-scsi drive on the machines onboard scsi. My root partition is on an UW drive on the adaptec card.

Took a little bit of doing, but this 'grossly obsolete' machine is running just great after adding some 'somewhat obsolete' parts. With 256MB, a fast drive, and a card with decent X performance (the 10-year-old matrox)... It performs a heck of a lot better than it's 180Mhz would make you guess.

Re:Using x86 PCI adapters in the Macintosh?

[leandrod]

> adaptac 2940UW

The 2940U is quite different. It never had a PowerDomain version.

White flash streaking by...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Jack Valenti running to Lousiana to instruct successor to get this terrorist tool banned through the next anti-terror legislation, through international treaties, and getting all the lawyers phones working on contacting state legislators on the payroll.

If this Bios gives us a fighting chance against DRM and the DRM chips in the IBM laptops, great.

5 second boot times will be the icing on the cake.

Re:How do I try it?

[kundor]

They have a list of supported/vaguely working motherboards.

No athlon64 mobos are on the list, sorry.

For the end consumer...

[0x0d0a]

Where can I purchase a board preloaded with and known to work with LinuxBIOS? Does it cost significantly more than one running Award or one of the other conventional BIOSes?

Re:For the end consumer...

[Ryan C.]

Here's a list.

This isn't really aimed at Joe Linux, but that may change when DRM starts getting imbedded in the major BIOSes.

Re:For the end consumer...

[DeathPenguin]

You'll have a hard time finding one pre-loaded with LinuxBIOS, but the VIA EPIA port has come a long way and would make a good starting point. EPIAs are mini-itx boards, usually with VIA EDEN CPUs, that should run for under $500.

Re:For the end consumer...

[Nynaeve]

Axiontech has a 1GHz VIA EPIA-V10000A for $123, and an 800MHz is $90. I got the 1GHz, and it is real nice. Here is the case ($72) I use with it.

A BIOS is for weens!

[chris_sawtell]

Real men load the boot loader using 16 switches and a press-button.

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[whoever57]

Yes, and when you can remember the sequence without notes at 11:00pm (or later) Saturday night (because that's the only time you can get on the machine that week) then you are a real real man.

Been there, done that, glad I don't have to any more!

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, it's called a momentary contact switch.

("press-button" indeed...)

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[ashitaka]

Ohhh, you mean like these switches.

Ah, the good old days.

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[FFFish]

Oh, when I was a child we used to dream of having sixteen switches.

No, we had to make do with a Velveeta box, an old Q-tip, and one of mom's buttons!

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[chris_sawtell]

These are the ones I used to use.

Lovely simple machine. The ALGOL compiler was really good.

Re:A BIOS is for weens!

[pair-a-noyd]

Damn, that looks a lot like my Rolm (I know, it's a PBX but it is also a computer, and yes, it's my personal property)

Re:How do I try it?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA .. moron

And now they are low quality?

[cbreaker]

All I do is set a few things in there when I build a box and forget it. My BIOS seems to work just fine on all the many hundreds of ASUS/Abit/Whatever boards I've touched.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[cbreaker]

I should add that I'm coming from a non-cluster non-big datacenter viewpoint here. For my needs, the standard BIOS's have more then enough quality for what they do.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

They may not be low quality but there are several reasons why tradtional BIOS's suck. For a start there is the huge amount of legacy 16bit, real-mode x86 code that just isn't used by modern operating systems but is supported because of things like Windows ME. If you're running Linux or Windows NT on your computer, you just do not need it. Then there are the traditional limitations in x86 BIOS's. You can't run an x86 machine headless and access the BIOS setup, for example. With LinuxBIOS they enable the network interfaces and allow you to perform setup via. a telnet session, exactly as you would with more expensive server kit. Last but not least there are bugs in some BIOS, and some of them can be pretty bad. LinuxBIOS offers you the ability to patch or workaround those bugs yourself, instead of having to wait for the vendor to fix them for you.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[IdleTime]

Well, I have a Dell P4 2.4Ghz PC and the CPU is capable of hypertreading but it is disabled by default and Dell will not make a BIOS (I guess Intel told them NO) that enables HT on that CPU. If LinuxBios would, I'd switch from the bad Dell BIOS to Linux BIOS in a heartbeat.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[cbreaker]

Yes, I do agree with many of your points. Being able to configure the bios via telnet or even a serial link would be very helpful in any data center or even a few servers in a closet.

The feature set of LinuxBIOS is really neat and it would be great if these features were universal.

As far as the actuall "quality" of existing BIOS's, I think they are pretty good. Sure, there's been bugs, but usually minor and almost always fixed asap. The major motherboard manufacturers make most of their money on these things and they tend to be on top of things like that, even well past the "normal" lifetime of PC hardware.

This is not to say that it's not very nice to be able to hack your own bios with LinuxBIOS in case there's a bug, but this only suits a small percentage of the admins out there that are able to do such a thing.

Like all OSS projects, I appreciate them quite a bit and I hope LinuxBIOS gains more vendor support. It would be really cool if it started replacing the standard BIOS on systems alltogether, especially with this DRM crap heading our way.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never seen the actual code for your typical BIOS, have you? Believe me, it isn't pretty.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not just enabling HT in your BIOS.

You would also need to install a kernel (NT or linux) specifically recompiled to use these new instructions, right?

AFAIK, standard NTXP 5.1 does not use HT.

Re:And now they are low quality?

[Agent Orange]

BIOS bugs are quickly fixed? Well, by some companies perhaps, but it's clear you've never had a Dell machine and flashed the BIOS. There are so many bugs it's not funny. Part of the dell Inspiron BIOS forum's FAQ warns you about flashing some models BIOSes because the update is known to fry the mobo!! I don't know how much dell has spent on replacing motherboards, but it's a fair bit.

My own bios has a nasty video bug that only enable 1MB of the video memory. Not at all happy with that. Linux can hack around it, luckily (who knows what MS does). And the BIOS doesn't support video modes for my native 1400x1050 resolution screen, so things under linux are *very* annoying.

This is just one company mind, but I'm willing to bet there are other examples out there. Not even the kills-your-computer type bugs are always fixed (unless enough people complain). *sigh*

Re:And now they are low quality?

[cbreaker]

I've heard other complaints about the Dells in the regard. And before Dell, it was the Compaq PC's. And before that it was the Packard Bells.

This type of problem you run into often with mass-produced assembly line PC's, especially if they are the leader in sales.

I don't buy prefab machines. I put them together myself, it's really easy. My friend with no computer experience managed to put his together and install Windows XP without too much trouble. It's totally worth it.

When you buy an Abit motherboard, or one of the others (Asus, Gigabyte, etc) it's usually their main selling product. Sure, asus makes other stuff, and so do the others, but the mainboards are the biggies. You generally get better support this way. Plus, you're in contact directly with the manufacturer, you don't have the large degree of seperation with a vendor like Dell.

Oh well..

Handy tips...

[GoRK]

I was recently doing some research to get started working with LinuxBIOS. The first thing I have done is to order a BIOS Savior.. This is a little gadget that runs about 15 bucks. It puts a switch on the outside of your case allowing you to switch to an alternate BIOS. With it, you can happily screw up your LinuxBIOS image all you want and still be able to boot your computer from the original BIOS.

Some motherboards have a dual BIOS or similar arrangement; however, there is not always a foolproof way to switch to your backup if the primary BIOS is hosed..

Keep these things in mind if you want to start playing with LinuxBIOS

Re:Handy tips...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool device, but the flashing text on their website nearly gave me a seizure.

Re:Handy tips...

[EzInKy]

The first thing I have done is to order a BIOS Savior..

Their hardware seems to be prone to shorting out, just look at how the text on their web page text keeps blinking on and off.

Re:Handy tips...

[GoRK]

All jokes aside, it's actually a good product. It's cheap, too.

Linux already has a BSOD screensaver

[Anonymous Coward]

So there's really nothing left to copy...

Boot Time...

[MP3Chuck]

How, exactly, do the measure boot time? From power button to desktop? Power button to where Linux actually starts loading/initializing?

Re:Boot Time...

[Hakubi_Washu]

Power Button to Login Prompt

Re:Boot Time...

[Vaevictis666]

For the clusters (which is what they were talking about) it's from powering on the first machine, to having every machine connected and registered with the Master, and able to start accepting code chunks to process.

At least, that's how I'd measure it.

Re:Boot Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Everyone knows that Windows gives you a login prompt even before it has finished loading all the services. Even when the desktop arrives, it sometimes isn't finished booting for another few seconds.

Re:Boot Time...

[DrSkwid]

for plan9 the 5s is for a cpu server from power to accepting jobs via the network

so (with the appropriate permissions) one can do

#!/bin/rc

fn do_job {
cpu -h $1 -c 'echo reboot > /dev/reboot'
cpu -h $1 -c 'do_something'
}

for(cpu in cpu1 cpu2 cpu3 cpu4 cpu5) {
do_job $cpu &
}

and your do_something jobs are running cleanly booted cpu server which is considered important in some circles

Re:Boot Time...

[Hakubi_Washu]

You _are_ aware that we are discussing Linux boot times, right?

(I guess, I shouldn't be feeding the trolls...)

Re:Linux is the BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that accessing the BIOS/BIOS flashing etc isn't exactly a guarded secret. I've yet to read the article but I'd assume after execution the code from a relative perspective wouldn't even reference the BIOS. The BIOS doesn't exactly function as a replacement hard disk. Vulnerabilities, as with anything in life, require a context. Sounds like BS

Re:my 3yr old XP system is at the desktop in 45 se

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my desktop systems that run linux takes about 2 minutes to boot up to useable after a kernel compile with my retard configuration.

I don't compile a kernel that often.

linux bios faq

[Anonymous Coward]

here.

OpenFirmware

[Quok]

I read this article a couple months ago when my issue of Linux Journal arrived. I had a couple questions about it then, guess this is a good time to ask them. :)

As I see it, half the point of LinuxBIOS is to provide a fast, open-sourced BIOS for x86 machines. It gets extra cool points for being Linux.

But I have to ask, why not just use OpenFirmware? Or at least, give LinuxBIOS some of the features of OpenFirmware. As far as I know, there is no such thing as OpenFirmware for the x86. It's got lots of neat benefits, like booting your machine off of another one on your network, or debugging a non-bootable machine remotely. Serial console, anyone? It has other benefits as well, that I can't remember; my brain is shot for the week.

For those of you that haven't heard of OpenFirmware, it's basically the "BIOS" on Macs.

Re:OpenFirmware

[John Hasler]

How open is OpenFirmware?

Re:OpenFirmware

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you that haven't heard of OpenFirmware, it's basically the "BIOS" on Macs.

... and Sun machines (where it's called OpenBoot). And also the now-extinct CHRP and PReP (both PowerPC-based) platforms. And also on some ARM-based platforms. And on other platforms too, since there are two companies (this one and this one) that sell OpenFirmware development kits, which are typically used for embedded systems.

By the way, it is an IEEE standard: standard #1275. For more info, you might want to check out The OpenFirmware web site.

Re:OpenFirmware

[bolthole]

There IS OpenFirmware (aka OpenBoot, aka IEEE 1275 standard) for x86 machines. It's just very very very rare.

Re:OpenFirmware

[Laur]

You are looking for OpenBIOS. It is still in the developement stages and is not ready for prime time yet. Incidently, the developers are planning on using LinuxBIOS code for the initial boot-up sequence. Also, OpenFirmware is not just the BIOS for Macs, it is an IEEE standard and alo used by other vendors such as Sun.

Re:OpenFirmware

[Tough Love]

"How open is OpenFirmware?"

Completely.

Re:Linux is the BIOS

[cubic6]

MODS! This is a form-letter troll. Every story, he claims "I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I'm a Teaching Fellow (TF) at Harvard, and... " and proceeds to give some example from one of the (apparently dozens) of classes that he's taught as to why something is true. He almost always uses concepts that make no sense, such as putting "quite a bit" of a linux system into a BIOS chip.

This post has a sly attack on Debian, claiming that a completely unrelated company could look at Debian's source code and find enough problems to call it "riddled with security holes", and casting a sad picture of a student who used open source code for something and got brutally shot down because of it.

Please don't mod these posts up. Even if he has a good point in the end, the ends just don't justify the means.

Re:my 3yr old XP system is at the desktop in 45 se

[Hakubi_Washu]

Their record seems to be 3 sec from Power to Login... I guess that beats your "non-retarded configuration", doesn't t?

Re:Christopher Lowell

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. I've fixed it for you:

Google Goes with Christopher Lowell

Yes I have no life. (i animated the gif, but since i don't know what the F i'm doing, it seems to work sometimes....sometimes not)

LinuxBIOS to boot other OSs

[jerel]

In my admittedly cursory review of the main LinuxBIOS site (here) and of the article I was unable to find anything about using it to boot other operating systems besides Linux. Can I buy a compatible mobo, put the LinuxBIOS on it, and then run Windows? I'm still running dual-boot for now and would need this.

Re:LinuxBIOS to boot other OSs

[DeathPenguin]

Yes. It's been known to load Windows 2000 in addition to Linux and a couple other *nixes (FreeBSD, Plan9). I'm not certain if WinXp will boot, though.

This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[rice_burners_suck]

I have an idea relating to LinuxBIOS that stems from a job I work sometimes involving industrial machines and their archaic control systems. Some of these computers require a technician to turn them on because of a complex procedure that must be carried out, including the typing in, by hand, of the first few assembly instructions to be executed, which tell the computer to read some software from some weird ROM, which then tells the computer to load the "real" operating software from something over RS-232. For this reason (among others), these machines are never turned off, except in a power outtage, which is a nightmare for machine shop owners. And it could all have been avoided by designing the computer a little differently, placing the OS itself in the ROM, and making the computer load it automatically on powerup.

I see this exactly the way I see modern operating systems boot up. The BIOS goes to some place and reads 512 bytes. Those bytes load up a "real" bootloader. That bootloader loads up some darn thing, which loads up the kernel, which loads up a bunch of device drivers and other software, and after a minute of grinding the disk, you have a system waiting for input. Why all this fuss?

My idea, then, is that instead of having an operating system kernel on your hard drive, it and its bootloader should reside in a really friggen powerful BIOS chip. By powerful I mean that there should be a LOT of flash space and the BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor. The software is started immediately upon the powerup of the computer. The BIOS Flash then looks like the root partition; it is mounted just like the hard drives and other devices are. All device drivers are present in the kernel, anyway, and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load. Furthermore, all software that starts at startup has a complete image "frozen" in the BIOS Flash, and is copied directly into RAM during the initial stages of startup. Therefore, if you have X, and an entire desktop environment, the entire computer goes from OFF to running X and your desktop software, and whatever else you want for that matter, in almost no time at all. Your monitor would probably take longer to warm up then it would take for your desktop to be ready for input.

This sounds a lot like un-suspending a computer that is in suspend mode, and yes, in effect, it's just like that. You have your system running the way you want it to start up, then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash, and when you turn on the computer, the BIOS copies the image directly into RAM, with perhaps a few routines here and there that initialize hardware upon powerup, or set a few values throughout RAM, like time-sensitive things and whatnot... No matter how fast MS makes their OS load, it'll never come close to this kind of performance.

Take it a step further, and each user could have almost an entire operating system setup, as if the computer has multiple personalities from the bootloader up. The BIOS has some routine that lets you log in, and accordingly, selects the image that will get loaded. In this respect, you could completely power down the computer, and come back a week later, turn it on, and immediately it will return to where it was.

This will probably be the case in 10 years or so. (Hey, in the 90's we went from the 386 SX to the Pentium 3. Who knows what the hell will happen by 2015 or so.)

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[Elf-friend]

Hmm. Wouldn't that mean flashing the BIOS every single time you wanted to install an OS upgrade? Flashing the BIOS is a non-trivial matter, and can result in a totally dead machine if anything goes wrong. The last thing I want is to have to send the mobo back to the manufacturer just because the power spiked while I was installing a patch or service pack.

Secondly, wouldn't this prevent (or at least complicate) multiple booting? Wouldn't this make one totally dependent on the motherboard vendor's choice of OS software? That is, unless one is a decent hardware hacker, anyhow.

Not trying to flame you, perhaps I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that, as things are, this would represent a significant step backward, not forward.

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[Hast]

One issue with this is that a flash has a limited number of flashes. It's not an extremely big issue, but changing the state every time you reboot the computer may not be a good idea.

Another is that having a processor in the BIOS is not needed. The computer already has a huge CPU in it, why not use it instead of duplicating that functionality (and poorly I might add)?

Finally a lot of the time spent booting is for hardware detection and such. It's hard to remove that completely. The time could be significantly reduced from what we see today though. My BIOS spends a load of time before the entire POST sequence is over (particularly the on board RAID controller is slow as molasses to do it's thing). But initiating stuff takes time, so you will never go from power on to desktop in "no time". Only in "pretty darned fast" time.

What I think you really want is a small kernel on a LinuxBIOS. That should give you you a login. When you reach that you continue booting from a IDE device (which can be a flash device mounted on IDE). That way you don't have to put the entire disto on the quite expensive BIOS chip but can use a normal HDD or standard flash RAM, whatever suits your purposes best.

The best thing with this is that you don't have to wait until 2015. You can do it today. (Personally I'm considering making my next computer a case-study of small, quick booting and quiet.

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[MyFourthAccount]

My idea, then, is that instead of having an operating system kernel on your hard drive, it and its bootloader should reside in a really friggen powerful BIOS chip.

You can do that today. Get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter and a CompactFlash device of the size of your choice. You probably think that's slower than putting it in the same Flash as the BIOS. Well, it's not. The BIOS Flash sits on most motherboards on the ISA bus, which is notoriously slow.

Remember, the BIOS is nothing more than a Flash device. And because it sits on a relatively slow interface, it really is not a great place to store large amounts of data.

BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor.

You misunderstand what the BIOS is. The BIOS is just a chunk of code, nothing more. It's not a microprocessor. The microprocessor is whatever Intel, AMD, Via etc. chip you have on the board. That's what executes the BIOS.

and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load

Again, this is something you can do today. You have to configure the Linux kernel to do that. Before modules people would do this a lot more often, but one of the downsides of Linux going 'big' is that most people don't know/understand how to strip their kernel from stuff they don't need, while on the other hand, features such as Plug and Play detection etc have increased the boot time dramatically.

then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash,

Remember that Flash write speed is very slow compared to a harddrive, no matter what bus it sits on. Even CompactFlash is much slower than even a slow harddrive. Imagine storing a snapshot on a fully loaded system with 1GB or RAM. That's a lot of stuff to write to anything.

Anyways, I know where you are coming from, but with all due respect, you don't really have the background to come up with a realistic system design.

Believe me, BIOS & OS coders _do_ come up with ideas like this all the time and I think that alternatives to the old (obsolete) BIOS will come up more and more. (hint: I am a BIOS coder that might be working on a skunkworks project ;-)).

In the meantime, if you want a fast boot, do the following:
- use LinuxBIOS
- put your kernel on CompactFlash. CompactFlash is available almost immediately vs. the 3-5 sec spin-up time of a normal HDD.
- configure your kernel properly and link all drivers you need statically instead of using modules (as much as you can).
- As soon as the HDD is ready, you can mount your main filesystem on that.

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[excessive]

Hmmm... Looks like a troll, smells like a troll...

Linux BIOS is there only to boot the main system. Its not the actual system that then runs. Its capable of setting up all the hardware on the motherboard and understanding partitions and all the other stuff required. It then loads in the bootloader and executes it with all the hardware set up.

Where it differs from current BIOS's is that they take ages to do the same thing. Although they are far easier to configure. (You get a menu rather than having to recompile and reflash)

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[crok]

Something like RISC OS? That's had the entire OS in ROM since the 1980s.

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[p3d0]

I bet you're the first person ever to think of that.

By the way, what do you do when hardware changes? Someone pops in a new network card; how does your quick-boot scheme deal with it?

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[crok]

Put the network card drivers in a ROM and stick it in the boot ROM socket?

Re:This is a wonderful idea... yeah right.

[p3d0]

Are you serious? Welcome back to the 1970s, folks.

ooowwww, my head just exploded

[Anonymous Coward]

I did this a couple times on a bank of Tandem Non-Stops at a cable television data center. I'd hate to pay their electric bill, but year-long uptimes were cake.

I even know a trick that will thread even the worst 9-track...

eCos and Redboot?

[bergeron76]

How is this different from eCos and/or Redboot?

I think I'm just a little unclear on the differences among bios/kernel loaders/boot loaders. I know that the linux kernel doesn't really use the BIOS (for the most part) when it discovers devices. As such, the BIOS is a moot point. How does this compare to embedded systems like Arm/XScale boards?

Can anyone clarify this for me/us?

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please translate this sentence into English for me:

" With PheonixBIOS reading your email because of such inordinate boot up times for Windows and other OSs, it was remarked in #plan9 about our 5s boot times using LinuxBIOS"

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're sorry, no known English translation is available at this time. --- Babelfish

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know technology acronyms and the idea of email and IRC, maybe you shouldn't be here. My suggestion is to go back to your AOL chat rooms.

oh yeah?

[corian]

With PheonixBIOS reading your email
phOEnix. And why are they reading my email, might I ask?

Re:oh yeah?

[DeathPenguin]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/19/132225 3&mode=thread&tid=137

Half-Full or Half-Empty

[AntiGenX]

While reading this article, I was struck by the paragraph:

"From what we can see, the two factors in our success were competition and the creation of a market. Competition gave us a wide variety of choices as to motherboard, chipset and CPU. Once there was a reasonable market, vendors were concerned about being left out."

Initially my reaction was, "Yeah, the market existed, and they found a cheap way to exploit it, since you're doing all the work for them." But that was my pessimistic side. After careful consideration, I prefer to take the optimistic approach on this one. I prefer to think of it as them working for us. The fact that they put all the little stuff together for me, saves me a lot of time in my garage with breadboards and soldering irons. Now we can have more control than just what processor, cards, and OS go into our systems. And the more input we have into how our computers run, the better we can improve computing, innovate, and come up with knew ways of handling problems.

I would like to see some of people involved with this group get onto standards committees since now, it seems, they have a voice. I'd like to see more open source type input into some of tomorrow's technology. Maybe someday we can stop having kludge after kludge shoved down our throats... Wouldn't the world be a better place then?

fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[Maimun]

I don't get that:

When the PC is turned on or reset, the CPUs start fetching from a known address, which traditionally has been from the top of memory (TOM) minus 16 bytes. In the original 8086, this was address 0xffff0; on newer PCs, it is address 0xfffffff0.

0xffff0 is 1MB - 16B, the original PC's had 1MB, so this part is clear. But 0xfffffff0 is 4GB - 16B. How many PCs have 4GB?

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[pe1chl]

It does not matter how much memory is really in the machine, or how much the motherboard can physically hold.
The processor can address 4GB using 32 address lines, and that defines an address space of 4GB.
Newer processors address 64GB using 4 extra address lines but they are yet another add-on that has to be enabled lateron by special software support.

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[Maimun]

So, what's at address 0xfffffff0 when there are only, say, 512MB installed? I realise that when the OS is running, the virtual addresses are translated into physical ones, but presumably at boot time the VM mechanism is still not operational an this 0xfffffff0 should refer to a true physical address. So... ?

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[zolon]

From my understanding, with lack of sleep on top of it, 4gb is the theoretical max the current line of consumer motherboards can have.

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROM. Stick RAM at the beginning of the address space and ROM at the end of the address space and you can add maximum amounts of both without them colliding. Kind of like starting program at start of RAM and stack at the end of RAM. Of course the arrangement may be more complex today, so it's probably just be a legacy issue.

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[Maimun]

ROM. Stick RAM at the beginning of the address space and ROM at the end of the address space and you can add maximum amounts of both without them colliding.

Thanks. So, the mechanism for addressing (however it is properly called) which is part of the chipset (right?) knows that when the address is at the very top/bottom, it has to turn to the ROM chip, not the SDRAM. What about during normal operation of the OS, are the very top/bottom still mapped to ROM?

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[pe1chl]

> So, what's at address 0xfffffff0 when there are only, say, 512MB installed?

The BIOS. That is what this article is about.
This used to be a ROM chip but today it is a Flash memory (a nonvolatile memory that is used mostly as a ROM but can be written by a BIOS update utility).

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[dallaylaen]

AFAI understand, they mean not reading from memory @0x...ff0 but reading from hardware PORT #...ff0.

The CPU just tells the bus: hey, get me what's at #0x...ff0, and the bus gives back instructions to run.

There must be real geeks around to correct me if I'm wrong. And RTFA, of course (I did:))

Re:fetch from 0xfffffff0?

[man_ls]

At boot time, firmware BIOS are mapped into regular RAM addressing. That's called shadowing, IIRC.

Every option BIOS and option firmware has a memory address in main memory, which is translated to call that specific chip instead of main memory.

u-boot is superior and much farther ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an FYI to slashdot readers, but linux-bios is not the first, best, or only GPL'd firmware. u-boot is vastly superior and taking over the embedded market quickly. It's being used by at least a dozen of the fortune 50. It provides support for several architectures already (arm,ppc,m68k,i386,etc). It's very flexable and small.

More information at the u-boot homepage. The u-boot README file lists all the architectures, supported platformas and options.

Credit goes to Wolfgang Denk, the father of the project.

Best wishes,
A firmware engineer

Re:u-boot is superior and much farther ahead

[eltoyoboyo]

Both U-Boot and LinuxBIOS have large chunks written in C. I like C myself and am not willing to participate in a C vs. Assembly Language debate. However, You can not miss this in the article: "We realized early on that assembly code could not be the future of LinuxBIOS. OpenBIOS was a lot of assembly code, with a difficult-to-master build structure"

The real point is, even with maximum optimization in the compiled (or assembled) code, you still need to allow "magic" timeout numbers to wait for boot media to spin up. The only way to really optimize boot times is to have Flash ROM/embedded operating systems.

Non-Volatile RAM?

[macklin01]

Won't this all be moot after non-volatile RAM (that's as fast as current RAM) is developed and widespread? AFAIK, fast non-volatile RAM technology is well under way and within reach in the next several years. The only reason we currently need to read from the hdd is that the RAM is volatile and loses its contents on a power down.

We can already see how this would work in an S3 suspend: the entire PC but the memory (and perhaps the CPU) is powered down. Press the keyboard, and you're back in your OS in seconds. Replace present-day memory with non-volatile memory, and you're completely there. -- Paul

Re:Non-Volatile RAM?

[vidarh]

Fast non-volatile RAM has been "well under way and within reach in the next several years" for decades... But even then you would sometimes want to reboot to reinitialize everything from scratch, for instance after a full OS upgrade.

Re:Non-Volatile RAM?

[macklin01]

Good point there. Actually, as I thought about it more, I realized that non-volatile RAM would probably never be as fast as "regular" RAM.

However, what would probably be a redeeming "in-between" solution would be a cheap, non-volatile solid state disk. Non-volatile RAM that's cheap enough and reliable enough to use a really fast hard drive. Not to store all data on, but big enough to store the OS on. One could always have a larger, traditional slow hard drive for data and a smaller, faster hard drive for the OS. Some people already do this with compact flash, etc., but those media aren't exactly made to be read / written a huge number of times like a partition with an OS needs to be ...

Great points! -- Paul

Which manufaturers are supporting this

[jonwil]

Which manufacturers are directly supporting this (with docs etc) and which arent.

Are there any manufacturers that have specificly told the LinuxBIOS people not to support their boards? If so, is there a reason?

What makes a secret?

[torpor]

If someone says something is secret, then it is. That's the only thing that makes something secret.

Re:What is a Pheonix?

[Anonymous Coward]

If only I had some mod points available right now...

Well said!

How much extra effort does it take to proof read? and yet so much slips by.

PS

Can you add 'lusers' and any form of "l337 speak" to your list of complaints?

Lack of confidence?

[trezor]

• phase out un-encrypted CDs. Fix the DVD-CSS security hole. Voila! No more fair-use.

You really don't have any belief in the hacker-culture, do you? :)

One thing that is thourougly proven, is that any copy-protection scheme developed as up to date, has been and can be broken.

Future DRMs might require nastier hacks, but I'd still be surprised if they weren't bypassable or breakable.

Re:Lack of confidence?

[phliar]

One thing that is thourougly proven, is that any copy-protection scheme developed as up to date, has been and can be broken. Future DRMs might require nastier hacks, but I'd still be surprised if they weren't bypassable or breakable.

Actually I do have faith in hacker culture. Unfortunately I also know crypto. Just because DVD-CSS is a broken insecure piece of crap doesn't mean all DRM formats will be. At my last job I designed a crypto protocol for DRM that is unbreakable. The only requirement is for a little crypto processor chip to be present in the device (sound card, video card, etc.) -- $2 or so in quantity. Yes this will take a few years and yes, you always have the option to not buy content and not to go to secure web sites. We need to get off our complacent asses and start campaigning against NGSCB/TCPA/TCG. Becoming a member of EFF would be a good start. ReadSeth Schoen's paper.

Re:Lack of confidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

"unbreakable"

If you are a security expert like you claim, you would know better than to use that phrase. Especially when discussing a product you were involved with..

LinuxISP

[maximilln]

If so many ISPs may be moving towards TCPA compliant routers why don't we, the open source community, do the same thing in the opposite direction?

I would work on systems which support an ISP which supports only open source users. There is no customer support for anything but an open source OS. Your network connection fails and you use Windows? Too bad. Your network connection fails and you're using Linux? Check ifconfig and route. That's customer support. After that you're on your own. It's open source. Figure it out.

Sure the service itself wouldn't save each user much (maybe $2-$3 less per month) but think what it does to the network as a whole. No longer will ISPs be able to support a clueless user base by relying on the monthly tithe from the competent users. No longer will ISPs be able to afford the latest TCPA enabled hardware by leeching from the open source users. No longer will ISPs be able to sign overpriced agreements with MS support by using open source dollars.

And one could have email@opensourcenetwork.net

kind of a good move on their part

[xilmaril]

face it. the people actually making these descisions haven't mastered the concept of a transistor, much less a complex computer system, much less anything that runs on it. They go by the theory that since they're management, it's their responsibility. And since they have too much pride to ask the people who have a fscking clue, clamming up is probably the best option they've got.

Not _THE_ kernel, _A_ kernel

[MarcQuadra]

Well this isn't really moving THE kernel into flash, it's moving A kernel into flash. The LinuxBIOS kernel 'skips' the fluff that the typical BIOS handles, inits what it has to, and then it executes a 'real' kernel from a disk or network location.

If things move to LinuxBIOS you won't be flashing every time a new kernel is released, you'll be installing kernels normally, and instead of GRUB the LinuxBIOS will handle 'bootloading'.

moving THE kernel into flash isn't practical, my kernels are typically about 2MBytes, today's flash on most PCs is about 2Mbits (512KB). The typical full-kernel would have NO CHANCE of fitting into there.

What this does, essentially, is give us something much like OpenFirmware for x86 machines, it's a full 32-bit protected system from the second you hit the power button, and it can initialize and configure much more 'native' info to the full kernel that it loads subsequently. Pairing this with a 16MB DiskOnChip would be excellent though, if you'r system fails you could boot to the DOC (with a small system onboard) and repair the main drives, or change configs, or chroot into the 'real' system and get something done.

Phoenix BIOS reading your email!

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix BIOS reading your email

If I ever catch those Punks reading my email, Ill beatem like a red headed step child.

Funny how you can make a story from clipping out the text you want...

BIOS Setup

[shadewind]

How does LinuxBIOS affect the BIOS setup? Can i still overclock my CPU, change AGP settings and such?

BIOS recovery mode

[swb]

Some systems can be put into a BIOS recovery mode where the system will read a BIOS image off of a floppy and re-flash itself.

I last did this in 1998 on a DEC EISA-bus 486-66 when the flashing process got corrupted, so it's not exactly a fancy new feature, either. I do think that this system required you to use the standard BIOS utility to *create* the rescue disk, which I think was a raw write to the diskette and not a DOS filesystem.

What surprises me is that vendors haven't put more user-friendly BIOS recovery (text menu, floppy operations, etc) options into ROM that one could access from startup or with a mainboard jumper, never having to worry about recovery images or something, or putting the shipping BIOS in ROM and have recovery be just dumping the ROM into flash.

The latter would seem the safest, since traditional floppy-type PCs are disappearing in favor of CD or USB systems.

Re:BIOS recovery mode

[GoRK]

Motherboards with a lot of onboard hardware (coincidentally these are often the boards that LinuxBIOS supports) frequently will not have such a feature, though, as things like the VGA BIOS are run from the BIOS itself and not from an auxillary ROM. This is, at least, the case with the EPAI boards.

Even if your motherboard has a failsafe state, it's not a good idea to rely on it as a safety net. Do you know how to access the failsafe state when you have a working BIOS?

Intel and Extensible Firmware Interface

[carabela]

I'm surprised why all eyes on /. are at MS when Intel is moving up with the EFI technology that could take out the need for BIOS (at least in future versions).

From their page:
"The EFI specification defines a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

The EFI specification is primarily intended for the next generation of IA-32 and Itanium(R) Architecture-based computers, and is an outgrowth of the "Intel Boot Initiative" (IBI) program that began in 1998."

/me is betting that MS is involved in this initiative too.

Re:How do I try it?

[JasonAsbahr]

LinuxBIOS support for nForce-based motherboards would be extra nice (similar chipset as in the XBox...)