Category: coreboot

Few weeks ago I got my alix board and today the guys from artecgroup told me my flexyICE is ready for shipping. Below are some pics I took of my alix board:

 

 

My very first task on gsoc was to make buildrom work with latest codes from coreboot, with that I changed how it used to build coreboot. First I introduced the coreboot kconfig options to buildrom so the user can configure and choose the options for coreboot in the same mainmenu as buildrom.

 
Some small changes was introduced as a consistent pattern to name the kernel mk files and the possibility to checkout source code with https:// or svn://.
Updated some packages mk files to comply some patterns I introduced.

 
I still have some changes to introduce but I think it`s already usable. I might push the final bits in the next few days whenever I get a chance to work out my patches.

Frank Vibrans from AMD pushed commits for the Fam12 and SB900 code into gerrit last week. This is just days after the official A-series release. The review has started. Feel free to help out. The gerrit links are:

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,54

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,53

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,52

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,51

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,41

http://review.coreboot.org/#change,40

 

I still haven’t had a good progress on my project, my first step is to work around the buildrom system.

I got to bring fully the coreboot Kconfig options to buildrom, since I don’t want to manually update it after coreboot updates I decided to write a small program to parse the coreboot Kconfig files. I found some api’s to help but I god stuck with that first task since none of them actually help me so much. A simple task became so complex and took me more time than I wanted(I started to update the api’s and change it acordingly to my needs, but well my project is not a kconfig api).

For a better and simpler solution I sat down and wrote a small shell script to run all the Kconfig’s and merge it into a single Kconfig.coreboot.

Now the next task is to change the building flow, how coreboot is fetched, patched and built.

For the final image and package I still want to get it all on the flash, I’m working on finding a solution to fit it as small as possible.

I found it would be interesting to use Kdrive to make the image smaller since it’s a minimal X server, but it’s unmaintained and we can build a thin X server from upstream.
For code sharing and analisys I setup a git repository so my mentor can comment on what I’m writing.
Now I have to move I bit faster.

This year I was accepted on gsoc – and I`m excited – to work in a project to make corebook a spice client. The idea is to use buildrom to pack everything.

Once buildrom has been unmaintained for quite some time now I`ll need to work around it before working on the spice bits.

 

Spice

Yeah! when I say spice I mean the remote and virtualized desktop protocol, originally developed by Qumranet now acquired by Red Hat.
The basic idea is to make a client run from a minimal environment. We`ll be working on a LAB(Linux as bootloader) solution.

 

Initial steps

As I said above, we need some work around buildrom system, the coreboot buildsystem has migrated to kbuild on the stable code and lots of things have changed with it.
Both buildrom and coreboot work with kbuild with that I`m writing a small python piece of code to parse coreboot`s Kconfig files and then arrange it into buildrom source code. I also need to 1) monitor the coreboot Kconfig files changes so I run the parser again and 2) change the coreboot build calls.
With all the kconfig arranged the buildrom user needs just to set the rom properties including the coreboot options(since those options are passed to coreboot build).

The kernel configs also need some attention it`s statically set for each board, I haven`t come with a better solution for this till now.

 

Hardware and new toys

I have ordered an ALIX.3D3, a flexyICE and a new desktop computer. The first 2 are comming from EU and will be dispatched later on May. The new desktop computer I get till the end of the week(before the gsoc bonding period end).

 

Now, let`s rock.