Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a coreboot-compatible motherboard ?
LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
21–30 of 187 posts
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check Ron Minnich's talk explaining the why: https://schd.ws/hosted_files/osseu17/84/Replace%20UEFI%20wit... (The video of the presentation is linked in the OP). There's already two and a half obscure OS's running underneath the OS for booting. So this replaces all that crap with something lean and good.
> So this replaces all that crap with something lean and good. I think the concern is about "lean". I don't think there's a lot of code yet, but I do see it will use http://u-root.tk/ .
LinuxBoot is trying to be agnostic to the initramfs. We don't want to prescribe what tools you use to boot your system.
When there is a build system, you'll be able to choose whatever initramfs you want to implement your boot policies. The two choices we have today are NERF (= LinuxBoot + u-root as initramfs, as you linked) and Heads (LinuxBoot with Heads kernel and runtime, see http://osresearch.net).
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#23Now systemd will be in the boot loader, too, so finally we'll be able to have perfect power management in Linux, once it controls everything first-hand :-)
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#24Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a coreboot-compatible motherboard ?
You do not. Take a look at Ron's talk here:
https://schd.ws/hosted_files/osseu17/84/Replace%20UEFI%20wit...
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#25Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a coreboot-compatible motherboard ?
No, basically they're taking a vendor-provided UEFI image and stripping out the 90% that they don't want and replacing it with Linux. This is for people who can't afford to port coreboot to their motherboard.
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#26Now systemd will be in the boot loader, too, so finally we'll be able to have perfect power management in Linux, once it controls everything first-hand :-)
If you want to use systemd with LinuxBoot, go for it, but LinuxBoot as it is doesn't prescribe an initramfs or a runtime. You can use whatever you want. :)
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#27Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a coreboot-compatible motherboard ?
Actually no. We've demonstrated this on boards without using coreboot support such as OCP's Winterfell machine. The reason is that we're inserting the Linux kernel in UEFI's DXE stage, whereas cpu init such as memory training are still handled by UEFI's PEI stage. From the perspective of UEFI, the Linux kernel is just another DXE to execute.
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#28Now systemd will be in the boot loader, too, so finally we'll be able to have perfect power management in Linux, once it controls everything first-hand :-)
If you want to use systemd with LinuxBoot, go for it, but LinuxBoot as it is doesn't prescribe an initramfs or a runtime. You can use whatever you want. :)
I was kidding, it was just "systemd overlords"-irony :-)
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to use systemd with LinuxBoot, go for it, but LinuxBoot as it is doesn't prescribe an initramfs or a runtime. You can use whatever you want. :)
I was kidding, it was just "systemd overlords"-irony :-)
I know, just making sure for other readers :) We're trying not to make the wrong impression. Besides - the goal of the project is to enable you to have more control over your firmware - if you want systemd in it, we might advise against it, but it's all up to you.
Re: LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware
#30Now systemd will be in the boot loader, too, so finally we'll be able to have perfect power management in Linux, once it controls everything first-hand :-)
You can put whatever in the initramfs, but since Linux just boots as a UEFI executable with CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y, it would be somewhat silly to start up a full userland via systemd in the bootloader.
systemd-boot is a thing though, which is a pretty small UEFI application that reads a Freedesktop Boot Loader Specification config [1] from an EFI partition and tells UEFI to boot a kernel directly. Definitely no Linux or systemd-init involved though.
[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSp...