Hey Eric, My response is inline. On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 11:13:46AM -0400, Eric McCorkle wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I'm through enough of my job change that I can start working on FreeBSD > again. One thing I've had on my list to examine is using FreeBSD with > coreboot, so I wanted to put out a call for anyone who has done work on > this, or knows anything about it. > > Here is what I know: > > * Coreboot _can_ boot kernels directly, but this requires two things: 1) > you must flash your BIOS every time you update a kernel, 2) the kernel > must be able to work without the usual device initialization that the > BIOS does. > > * Coreboot has two significant payload options beyond a kernel: Seabios > and GRUB (supposedly Tianocore EFI is an option, but it apparently > doesn't really work). > > * Scrounging the coreboot wiki seems to produce some conflicting > information. One page claims that the FreeBSD kernel can boot directly > as a coreboot payload; another claims GRUB or Seabios to be the only > options. > > * The PC Engines boards evidently use coreboot, and I've heard multiple > reports of them running FreeBSD systems without a problem. I don't know > whether they use GRUB or Seabios. (Aside: I'm thinking about ordering > some of these boards for my own use, so I'm generally interested in how > well they function with FreeBSD) I own several PC Engines APU boards. They definitely use Coreboot as maintained by these peeps: https://twitter.com/3mdeb_com The Coreboot for the APU boards uses Seabios. > > > My plan is roughly this: > > * Refurbish the GRUB port, get it working again in QEMU (possibly on one > of my machines), also possibly push a patch to GRUB to use the keybufs > mechanism to pass in GELI keys. > > * Get coreboot with GRUB/Seabios booting FreeBSD in QEMU > > * Possibly create a coreboot port (uncertain how this would work, since > Coreboot has its own extensive config menu) > > * Hold my breath and test it out on real hardware (I have a Librem 13 r1 > for this purpose) > > * Possibly try getting the FreeBSD kernel to work as a coreboot payload. > > > Here's what I don't know/what would be useful knowledge for me: > > * Anyone else who's been experimenting/working on coreboot support, and > what they found > > * Any working examples of using Coreboot with FreeBSD > > * Down the road, anything about adapting the FreeBSD kernel to work with > a new boot platform (ie. low level details about how to set it up in > memory on a bare-metal system and start execution) > Reach out to 3mdeb (feel free to CC me, if you'd like). See what they'd like help with. There's certainly a lot more work that could be done. Thanks, -- Shawn Webb Cofounder / Security Engineer HardenedBSD Tor-ified Signal: +1 443-546-8752 Tor+XMPP+OTR: lattera_at_is.a.hacker.sx GPG Key ID: 0xFF2E67A277F8E1FA GPG Key Fingerprint: D206 BB45 15E0 9C49 0CF9 3633 C85B 0AF8 AB23 0FB2
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