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https://github.com/linuxboot/linuxboot

The LinuxBoot project is working to enable Linux to replace your firmware on all platforms.
https://github.com/linuxboot/linuxboot

bios firmware linux-kernel security uefi

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The LinuxBoot project is working to enable Linux to replace your firmware on all platforms.

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README 

        
# linuxboot

The LinuxBoot project allows you to replace your server's firmware with Linux.



Supported server mainboards

===

* qemu emulated Q35 systems

* [Intel S2600WF](https://trmm.net/S2600wf)

* [Dell R630](https://trmm.net/NERF)

* Winterfell Open Compute node (works well)

* Leopard Open Compute node (works well)

* Tioga Pass Open Compute node (works well)

* Monolake Open Compute node (not tested)



Build instructions

===

Make sure you have installed the dependencies `uuid-dev`, `nasm`, and

`acpica-tools` (or equivalent for your distribution).



You need to provide:

* The vendor UEFI firmware for the mainboard

* A Linux kernel built with the `CONFIG_EFI_BDS` option enabled

* An `initrd.cpio` file with enough tools to `kexec` the rest of the system.



For the `initrd`, the [Heads firmware](http://osresearch.net/) or

[u-root](https://github.com/u-root/u-root) systems work well.

Both will build minimal runtimes that can fit into the few megabytes

of space available.



For everything except qemu, you'll need to copy the vendor ROM dump

to `boards/$(BOARD)/$(BOARD).rom`.  Due to copyright restrictions, we can't

bundle the ROM images in this tree and you must supply your own ROM from

your own machine.  qemu can built its own ROM from the `edk2` tree,

so this is not necessary.



Configure the build system:



    cp path/to/s2600wf.rom boards/s2600wf/

    make \

    	BOARD=s2600wf \

    	KERNEL=../path/to/bzImage \

    	INITRD=../path/to/initrd.cpio.xz \

    	config

    make



This will write the values into the `.config` file so that you don't

need to specify them each time.  If all goes well you will end up with

a file in `build/$(BOARD)/linuxboot.rom` that can be flashed to your machine.

It will take a while since it also clones the LinuxBoot patched version

of [`tianocore/edk2` UDK2018 branch](https://github.com/linuxboot/edk2/tree/UDK2018)

and build it.



Emulating with qemu

===



If you want to experiment with LinuxBoot you can run it under qemu.

No ROM file is necessary, although you still need a Heads or NERF runtime

kernel/initrd pair.  You can launch the emulator by running:



    make run



This will use your current terminal as the serial console, which

will likely mess with the settings.  After killing qemu by closing

the window you will need to run `stty sane` to restore the terminal

settings (echo is likely turned off, so you'll have to type this in

the blind).



Adding a new mainboard

===



Copy `Makefile.board` from one of the other mainboards and edit it to match

your new board's ROM layout.  The qemu one is not the best example since it has

to match the complex layout of OVMF; most real mainboards are not this messy.



You'll need to figure out which FVs have to be preserved, how much space

can be recovered from the ME region, etc.  The per-board makefile needs

to set the following variables:



* `FVS`: an ordered list of IFD, firmware volumes and padding

* `linuxboot-size`: the final size of the ROM image in bytes (we should verify this against the real ROM instead)



More info

===

* https://www.linuxboot.org/

* https://trmm.net/LinuxBoot_34c3