Coreboot

Introduction

I first read about Coreboot a.k.a. LinuxBIOS online. Initially it seemed like a novel project, but really in its infancy, not a lot of motherboards and chipsets were supported when I first read about the LinuxBIOS project. Quite a bit has changed, including the name which has changed from LinuxBIOS to Coreboot.

My interest in Coreboot is as a computer refurbisher. Coreboot can boot a number of interesting payloads, including Memtest86+. As a computer refurbisher this is useful because with only a motherboard, power supply, power switch and keyboard we can test donated RAM. This means we can set up a bunch of motherboards against a wall and it doesn't take up a lot of space. We put 1 LCD monitor on a switch and connect it to the boards.

For me being able to supply the Coreboot project with information about motherboards that are donated to The Working Centre's Computer Recycling Project gives me a rush. We see quite a range of motherboards pass through Computer Recycling. It only takes a little bit of work to supply the project's mailing list with that information.

My involvement with the Coreboot and Flashrom projects at this point is very limited, but as I better learn the C programming language I might start making other contributions.

How I test systems

It's possible to test systems using a live linux CD with the flashrom, superiotool, and lspci embedded in the distribution, but before I knew about the live CD I tested using a hard drive with a server-install (text only) of Ubuntu, subversion, the compiled tools flashrom, superiotool, and lspci. I also installed OpenSSH and used the same network card for each system tested (so when I swapped the hard drive the server install didn't complain about wrong drivers).

I then booted the system and ran the following commands:

sudo lspci -nnvvvxxx > MFG-Model.lspci.txt
sudo superiotool -deV > MFG-Model.superiotool.txt
sudo flashrom -V > MFG-Model.flashrom.txt

Using a second system with a GUI (Gnome) install of Ubuntu I SSH'd in using gftp, copied the 3 newly created files to a directory and sent them to the flashrom mailing list through my mail client.

While this method might seem slow to the live CD method, consider:

• Not all system units can run a live CD, some come in with broken CDROMs (so I'd have to swap something anyway).
• Doing it my way means 2 copies of the data, one on the HD I use for the test, and one on the machine I use to remote in.
• Using SSH you can remote in, which means using GUI tools (gFTP/gmail/etc.), thus making the job easier.

It's relatively fast to disconnect a hard drive and plug in a network card into a motherboard. It also gives me a chance to check systems for bad capacitors and to visually verify the model number on motherboards that display the model number right on the board (not all do).

Links

Aopen MX36LE-UN motherboard manual link (GERMANY)

Notes on Gigabyte-7ZXE.version1.1.update.superiotool.txt

This is an updated run of the superiotool after a recommended patch by Carl-Daniel Hailfinger. A big thank you for the patch and the information about the patch. The following is what was suggested for the patch:

svn co svn://coreboot.org/coreboot/trunk/util/superiotool
cd superiotool
svn revert -R .
svn up
make clean
make
make install
superiotool -deV

(assuming you're still in the superiotool directory)
svn revert -R .
curl -s http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/683/raw/|patch -p1
make clean
make
make install
setpci -d 1106:0686 85.b=02:02
superiotool -deV
setpci -d 1106:0686 85.b=00:02

Again, thanks Carl.