Hey

These are the minutes for the meeting we had today at ELC-Europe/LinuxCon Europe. Please fix/amend as you see fit!

Cheers,

== Attendees ==

* Sascha Hauer * Olof Johansson * Grant Likely * Jean-Christophe * Deepak Saxena * Nicolas Pitre * Loïc Minier * Michael Frysinger

== Random topics/agenda ==

* Barebox * Support in Linaro tools * Runtime configuration via DeviceTree * Boot menu

* U-Boot * zload on ARM * runtime configuration via DeviceTree

* UEFI * Tianocore * Support in Linaro tools * PXE implementation * Intel builds * pxelinux compatibility app * U-Boot (Barebox?) UEFI compatibility app * grub-efi porting

* ACPI * Intel opensource implementation * ARM support in linux * Compiler

* Specs * entry point protocol (Jean-Christophe) * kernel image format (Jean-Christophe) * secure boot (Grant)

== Minutes ==

* Recent decision to focus on server rather than doing boot architecture at large * Constraints of supporting older OS on newer hardware * Calxeda focusing entirely on server, with A9 * Apple and Windows 8 expecting the same boot interface on all supported hardware * Apple not interesting case because vertically integrated * Short-term + long-term approach * Short-term: U-Boot * Long-term: Tianocore * Short-term pain points * uImage solved: use -1 as load address to use the default address * userspace should have nothing board specific, but should pass: * kernel * initrd * dtb -- actually that's board specific :-/ * ship all device trees * install one as the firmware during install * if we need to update the dt, install the one corresponding to the currently used device-tree compatible property (from /proc) * Replacing the DTB in the firmware might break the signature * Eventually want NOT to load DTB from userspace but only rely on the firmware one; DTB updates are provided via firmware upgrades * Can't demonstrate this easily with boards without flash in Linaro, but that's ok * u-boot would gain an eliloboot command which reads an elilo config file and runs it * Could have a GRUB backend for U-Boot before we get the EFI one * Should we target a single config file format for all bootloaders? * Too hard and so many concrete short-terms problems to solve * Can boot with GPT/EFI conventions on things which look like disks (e.g. SD/MMC) * Doesn't support MTD * GRUB ARM port * Direct port or on top of U-Boot * Need block access and console access * Probably larger work to port GRUB to U-Boot/Barebox than parsing grub.cfg from U-Boot * But would miss LVM/RAID/filesystems from grub * Why isn't GRUB logic in a library? * Wouldn't help anyway as U-Boot is GPLv2 only and GRUB is v3+ * U-Boot ABI is stable, Barebox has a POSIX ABI

* Plan: * Add grubcfg command to parse grub.cfg * Port GRUB to Barebox or U-Boot * Move to grub-efi

* ACPI * Is it going to open up? * How does Tianocore support ACPI today? What would it take to support on ARM * Enabling as many ACPI related pieces on ARM: ACPI BIOS, compiler, linux implementation