xref: /openbmc/u-boot/doc/README.x86 (revision 0d71511a)
1#
2# Copyright (C) 2014, Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
3# Copyright (C) 2014, Bin Meng <bmeng.cn@gmail.com>
4#
5# SPDX-License-Identifier:	GPL-2.0+
6#
7
8U-Boot on x86
9=============
10
11This document describes the information about U-Boot running on x86 targets,
12including supported boards, build instructions, todo list, etc.
13
14Status
15------
16U-Boot supports running as a coreboot [1] payload on x86. So far only Link
17(Chromebook Pixel) and QEMU [2] x86 targets have been tested, but it should
18work with minimal adjustments on other x86 boards since coreboot deals with
19most of the low-level details.
20
21U-Boot also supports booting directly from x86 reset vector, without coreboot.
22In this case, known as bare mode, from the fact that it runs on the
23'bare metal', U-Boot acts like a BIOS replacement. The following platforms
24are supported:
25
26   - Bayley Bay CRB
27   - Congatec QEVAL 2.0 & conga-QA3/E3845
28   - Cougar Canyon 2 CRB
29   - Crown Bay CRB
30   - Galileo
31   - Link (Chromebook Pixel)
32   - Minnowboard MAX
33   - Samus (Chromebook Pixel 2015)
34   - QEMU x86
35
36As for loading an OS, U-Boot supports directly booting a 32-bit or 64-bit
37Linux kernel as part of a FIT image. It also supports a compressed zImage.
38U-Boot supports loading an x86 VxWorks kernel. Please check README.vxworks
39for more details.
40
41Build Instructions for U-Boot as coreboot payload
42-------------------------------------------------
43Building U-Boot as a coreboot payload is just like building U-Boot for targets
44on other architectures, like below:
45
46$ make coreboot-x86_defconfig
47$ make all
48
49Note this default configuration will build a U-Boot payload for the QEMU board.
50To build a coreboot payload against another board, you can change the build
51configuration during the 'make menuconfig' process.
52
53x86 architecture  --->
54	...
55	(qemu-x86) Board configuration file
56	(qemu-x86_i440fx) Board Device Tree Source (dts) file
57	(0x01920000) Board specific Cache-As-RAM (CAR) address
58	(0x4000) Board specific Cache-As-RAM (CAR) size
59
60Change the 'Board configuration file' and 'Board Device Tree Source (dts) file'
61to point to a new board. You can also change the Cache-As-RAM (CAR) related
62settings here if the default values do not fit your new board.
63
64Build Instructions for U-Boot as BIOS replacement (bare mode)
65-------------------------------------------------------------
66Building a ROM version of U-Boot (hereafter referred to as u-boot.rom) is a
67little bit tricky, as generally it requires several binary blobs which are not
68shipped in the U-Boot source tree. Due to this reason, the u-boot.rom build is
69not turned on by default in the U-Boot source tree. Firstly, you need turn it
70on by enabling the ROM build:
71
72$ export BUILD_ROM=y
73
74This tells the Makefile to build u-boot.rom as a target.
75
76---
77
78Chromebook Link specific instructions for bare mode:
79
80First, you need the following binary blobs:
81
82* descriptor.bin - Intel flash descriptor
83* me.bin - Intel Management Engine
84* mrc.bin - Memory Reference Code, which sets up SDRAM
85* video ROM - sets up the display
86
87You can get these binary blobs by:
88
89$ git clone http://review.coreboot.org/p/blobs.git
90$ cd blobs
91
92Find the following files:
93
94* ./mainboard/google/link/descriptor.bin
95* ./mainboard/google/link/me.bin
96* ./northbridge/intel/sandybridge/systemagent-r6.bin
97
98The 3rd one should be renamed to mrc.bin.
99As for the video ROM, you can get it here [3] and rename it to vga.bin.
100Make sure all these binary blobs are put in the board directory.
101
102Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom:
103
104$ make chromebook_link_defconfig
105$ make all
106
107---
108
109Chromebook Samus (2015 Pixel) instructions for bare mode:
110
111First, you need the following binary blobs:
112
113* descriptor.bin - Intel flash descriptor
114* me.bin - Intel Management Engine
115* mrc.bin - Memory Reference Code, which sets up SDRAM
116* refcode.elf - Additional Reference code
117* vga.bin - video ROM, which sets up the display
118
119If you have a samus you can obtain them from your flash, for example, in
120developer mode on the Chromebook (use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to obtain a terminal and
121log in as 'root'):
122
123   cd /tmp
124   flashrom -w samus.bin
125   scp samus.bin username@ip_address:/path/to/somewhere
126
127If not see the coreboot tree [4] where you can use:
128
129   bash crosfirmware.sh samus
130
131to get the image. There is also an 'extract_blobs.sh' scripts that you can use
132on the 'coreboot-Google_Samus.*' file to short-circuit some of the below.
133
134Then 'ifdtool -x samus.bin' on your development machine will produce:
135
136   flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin
137   flashregion_1_bios.bin
138   flashregion_2_intel_me.bin
139
140Rename flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin to descriptor.bin
141Rename flashregion_2_intel_me.bin to me.bin
142You can ignore flashregion_1_bios.bin - it is not used.
143
144To get the rest, use 'cbfstool samus.bin print':
145
146samus.bin: 8192 kB, bootblocksize 2864, romsize 8388608, offset 0x700000
147alignment: 64 bytes, architecture: x86
148
149Name                           Offset     Type         Size
150cmos_layout.bin                0x700000   cmos_layout  1164
151pci8086,0406.rom               0x7004c0   optionrom    65536
152spd.bin                        0x710500   (unknown)    4096
153cpu_microcode_blob.bin         0x711540   microcode    70720
154fallback/romstage              0x722a00   stage        54210
155fallback/ramstage              0x72fe00   stage        96382
156config                         0x7476c0   raw          6075
157fallback/vboot                 0x748ec0   stage        15980
158fallback/refcode               0x74cd80   stage        75578
159fallback/payload               0x75f500   payload      62878
160u-boot.dtb                     0x76eb00   (unknown)    5318
161(empty)                        0x770000   null         196504
162mrc.bin                        0x79ffc0   (unknown)    222876
163(empty)                        0x7d66c0   null         167320
164
165You can extract what you need:
166
167   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n pci8086,0406.rom -f vga.bin
168   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n fallback/refcode -f refcode.rmod
169   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n mrc.bin -f mrc.bin
170   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n fallback/refcode -f refcode.bin -U
171
172Note that the -U flag is only supported by the latest cbfstool. It unpacks
173and decompresses the stage to produce a coreboot rmodule. This is a simple
174representation of an ELF file. You need the patch "Support decoding a stage
175with compression".
176
177Put all 5 files into board/google/chromebook_samus.
178
179Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom:
180
181$ make chromebook_link_defconfig
182$ make all
183
184If you are using em100, then this command will flash write -Boot:
185
186   em100 -s -d filename.rom -c W25Q64CV -r
187
188---
189
190Intel Crown Bay specific instructions for bare mode:
191
192U-Boot support of Intel Crown Bay board [4] relies on a binary blob called
193Firmware Support Package [5] to perform all the necessary initialization steps
194as documented in the BIOS Writer Guide, including initialization of the CPU,
195memory controller, chipset and certain bus interfaces.
196
197Download the Intel FSP for Atom E6xx series and Platform Controller Hub EG20T,
198install it on your host and locate the FSP binary blob. Note this platform
199also requires a Chipset Micro Code (CMC) state machine binary to be present in
200the SPI flash where u-boot.rom resides, and this CMC binary blob can be found
201in this FSP package too.
202
203* ./FSP/QUEENSBAY_FSP_GOLD_001_20-DECEMBER-2013.fd
204* ./Microcode/C0_22211.BIN
205
206Rename the first one to fsp.bin and second one to cmc.bin and put them in the
207board directory.
208
209Note the FSP release version 001 has a bug which could cause random endless
210loop during the FspInit call. This bug was published by Intel although Intel
211did not describe any details. We need manually apply the patch to the FSP
212binary using any hex editor (eg: bvi). Go to the offset 0x1fcd8 of the FSP
213binary, change the following five bytes values from orginally E8 42 FF FF FF
214to B8 00 80 0B 00.
215
216As for the video ROM, you need manually extract it from the Intel provided
217BIOS for Crown Bay here [6], using the AMI MMTool [7]. Check PCI option ROM
218ID 8086:4108, extract and save it as vga.bin in the board directory.
219
220Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
221
222$ make crownbay_defconfig
223$ make all
224
225---
226
227Intel Cougar Canyon 2 specific instructions for bare mode:
228
229This uses Intel FSP for 3rd generation Intel Core and Intel Celeron processors
230with mobile Intel HM76 and QM77 chipsets platform. Download it from Intel FSP
231website and put the .fd file (CHIEFRIVER_FSP_GOLD_001_09-OCTOBER-2013.fd at the
232time of writing) in the board directory and rename it to fsp.bin.
233
234Now build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
235
236$ make cougarcanyon2_defconfig
237$ make all
238
239The board has two 8MB SPI flashes mounted, which are called SPI-0 and SPI-1 in
240the board manual. The SPI-0 flash should have flash descriptor plus ME firmware
241and SPI-1 flash is used to store U-Boot. For convenience, the complete 8MB SPI-0
242flash image is included in the FSP package (named Rom00_8M_MB_PPT.bin). Program
243this image to the SPI-0 flash according to the board manual just once and we are
244all set. For programming U-Boot we just need to program SPI-1 flash.
245
246---
247
248Intel Bay Trail based board instructions for bare mode:
249
250This uses as FSP as with Crown Bay, except it is for the Atom E3800 series.
251Two boards that use this configuration are Bayley Bay and Minnowboard MAX.
252Download this and get the .fd file (BAYTRAIL_FSP_GOLD_003_16-SEP-2014.fd at
253the time of writing). Put it in the corresponding board directory and rename
254it to fsp.bin.
255
256Obtain the VGA RAM (Vga.dat at the time of writing) and put it into the same
257board directory as vga.bin.
258
259You still need two more binary blobs. For Bayley Bay, they can be extracted
260from the sample SPI image provided in the FSP (SPI.bin at the time of writing).
261
262   $ ./tools/ifdtool -x BayleyBay/SPI.bin
263   $ cp flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin board/intel/bayleybay/descriptor.bin
264   $ cp flashregion_2_intel_me.bin board/intel/bayleybay/me.bin
265
266For Minnowboard MAX, we can reuse the same ME firmware above, but for flash
267descriptor, we need get that somewhere else, as the one above does not seem to
268work, probably because it is not designed for the Minnowboard MAX. Now download
269the original firmware image for this board from:
270
271http://firmware.intel.com/sites/default/files/2014-WW42.4-MinnowBoardMax.73-64-bit.bin_Release.zip
272
273Unzip it:
274
275   $ unzip 2014-WW42.4-MinnowBoardMax.73-64-bit.bin_Release.zip
276
277Use ifdtool in the U-Boot tools directory to extract the images from that
278file, for example:
279
280   $ ./tools/ifdtool -x MNW2MAX1.X64.0073.R02.1409160934.bin
281
282This will provide the descriptor file - copy this into the correct place:
283
284   $ cp flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin board/intel/minnowmax/descriptor.bin
285
286Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
287Note: below are examples/information for Minnowboard MAX.
288
289$ make minnowmax_defconfig
290$ make all
291
292Checksums are as follows (but note that newer versions will invalidate this):
293
294$ md5sum -b board/intel/minnowmax/*.bin
295ffda9a3b94df5b74323afb328d51e6b4  board/intel/minnowmax/descriptor.bin
29669f65b9a580246291d20d08cbef9d7c5  board/intel/minnowmax/fsp.bin
297894a97d371544ec21de9c3e8e1716c4b  board/intel/minnowmax/me.bin
298a2588537da387da592a27219d56e9962  board/intel/minnowmax/vga.bin
299
300The ROM image is broken up into these parts:
301
302Offset   Description         Controlling config
303------------------------------------------------------------
304000000   descriptor.bin      Hard-coded to 0 in ifdtool
305001000   me.bin              Set by the descriptor
306500000   <spare>
3076ef000   Environment         CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET
3086f0000   MRC cache           CONFIG_ENABLE_MRC_CACHE
309700000   u-boot-dtb.bin      CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE
310790000   vga.bin             CONFIG_VGA_BIOS_ADDR
3117c0000   fsp.bin             CONFIG_FSP_ADDR
3127f8000   <spare>             (depends on size of fsp.bin)
3137ff800   U-Boot 16-bit boot  CONFIG_SYS_X86_START16
314
315Overall ROM image size is controlled by CONFIG_ROM_SIZE.
316
317---
318
319Intel Galileo instructions for bare mode:
320
321Only one binary blob is needed for Remote Management Unit (RMU) within Intel
322Quark SoC. Not like FSP, U-Boot does not call into the binary. The binary is
323needed by the Quark SoC itself.
324
325You can get the binary blob from Quark Board Support Package from Intel website:
326
327* ./QuarkSocPkg/QuarkNorthCluster/Binary/QuarkMicrocode/RMU.bin
328
329Rename the file and put it to the board directory by:
330
331   $ cp RMU.bin board/intel/galileo/rmu.bin
332
333Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
334
335$ make galileo_defconfig
336$ make all
337
338---
339
340QEMU x86 target instructions for bare mode:
341
342To build u-boot.rom for QEMU x86 targets, just simply run
343
344$ make qemu-x86_defconfig
345$ make all
346
347Note this default configuration will build a U-Boot for the QEMU x86 i440FX
348board. To build a U-Boot against QEMU x86 Q35 board, you can change the build
349configuration during the 'make menuconfig' process like below:
350
351Device Tree Control  --->
352	...
353	(qemu-x86_q35) Default Device Tree for DT control
354
355Test with coreboot
356------------------
357For testing U-Boot as the coreboot payload, there are things that need be paid
358attention to. coreboot supports loading an ELF executable and a 32-bit plain
359binary, as well as other supported payloads. With the default configuration,
360U-Boot is set up to use a separate Device Tree Blob (dtb). As of today, the
361generated u-boot-dtb.bin needs to be packaged by the cbfstool utility (a tool
362provided by coreboot) manually as coreboot's 'make menuconfig' does not provide
363this capability yet. The command is as follows:
364
365# in the coreboot root directory
366$ ./build/util/cbfstool/cbfstool build/coreboot.rom add-flat-binary \
367  -f u-boot-dtb.bin -n fallback/payload -c lzma -l 0x1110000 -e 0x1110000
368
369Make sure 0x1110000 matches CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE, which is the symbol address
370of _x86boot_start (in arch/x86/cpu/start.S).
371
372If you want to use ELF as the coreboot payload, change U-Boot configuration to
373use CONFIG_OF_EMBED instead of CONFIG_OF_SEPARATE.
374
375To enable video you must enable these options in coreboot:
376
377   - Set framebuffer graphics resolution (1280x1024 32k-color (1:5:5))
378   - Keep VESA framebuffer
379
380At present it seems that for Minnowboard Max, coreboot does not pass through
381the video information correctly (it always says the resolution is 0x0). This
382works correctly for link though.
383
384Test with QEMU for bare mode
385----------------------------
386QEMU is a fancy emulator that can enable us to test U-Boot without access to
387a real x86 board. Please make sure your QEMU version is 2.3.0 or above test
388U-Boot. To launch QEMU with u-boot.rom, call QEMU as follows:
389
390$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom
391
392This will instantiate an emulated x86 board with i440FX and PIIX chipset. QEMU
393also supports emulating an x86 board with Q35 and ICH9 based chipset, which is
394also supported by U-Boot. To instantiate such a machine, call QEMU with:
395
396$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -M q35
397
398Note by default QEMU instantiated boards only have 128 MiB system memory. But
399it is enough to have U-Boot boot and function correctly. You can increase the
400system memory by pass '-m' parameter to QEMU if you want more memory:
401
402$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -m 1024
403
404This creates a board with 1 GiB system memory. Currently U-Boot for QEMU only
405supports 3 GiB maximum system memory and reserves the last 1 GiB address space
406for PCI device memory-mapped I/O and other stuff, so the maximum value of '-m'
407would be 3072.
408
409QEMU emulates a graphic card which U-Boot supports. Removing '-nographic' will
410show QEMU's VGA console window. Note this will disable QEMU's serial output.
411If you want to check both consoles, use '-serial stdio'.
412
413Multicore is also supported by QEMU via '-smp n' where n is the number of cores
414to instantiate. Note, the maximum supported CPU number in QEMU is 255.
415
416The fw_cfg interface in QEMU also provides information about kernel data,
417initrd, command-line arguments and more. U-Boot supports directly accessing
418these informtion from fw_cfg interface, which saves the time of loading them
419from hard disk or network again, through emulated devices. To use it , simply
420providing them in QEMU command line:
421
422$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -m 1024 -kernel /path/to/bzImage
423    -append 'root=/dev/ram console=ttyS0' -initrd /path/to/initrd -smp 8
424
425Note: -initrd and -smp are both optional
426
427Then start QEMU, in U-Boot command line use the following U-Boot command to
428setup kernel:
429
430 => qfw
431qfw - QEMU firmware interface
432
433Usage:
434qfw <command>
435    - list                             : print firmware(s) currently loaded
436    - cpus                             : print online cpu number
437    - load <kernel addr> <initrd addr> : load kernel and initrd (if any) and setup for zboot
438
439=> qfw load
440loading kernel to address 01000000 size 5d9d30 initrd 04000000 size 1b1ab50
441
442Here the kernel (bzImage) is loaded to 01000000 and initrd is to 04000000. Then,
443'zboot' can be used to boot the kernel:
444
445=> zboot 02000000 - 04000000 1b1ab50
446
447CPU Microcode
448-------------
449Modern CPUs usually require a special bit stream called microcode [8] to be
450loaded on the processor after power up in order to function properly. U-Boot
451has already integrated these as hex dumps in the source tree.
452
453SMP Support
454-----------
455On a multicore system, U-Boot is executed on the bootstrap processor (BSP).
456Additional application processors (AP) can be brought up by U-Boot. In order to
457have an SMP kernel to discover all of the available processors, U-Boot needs to
458prepare configuration tables which contain the multi-CPUs information before
459loading the OS kernel. Currently U-Boot supports generating two types of tables
460for SMP, called Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) [9] and Multi-Processor (MP)
461[10] tables. The writing of these two tables are controlled by two Kconfig
462options GENERATE_SFI_TABLE and GENERATE_MP_TABLE.
463
464Driver Model
465------------
466x86 has been converted to use driver model for serial, GPIO, SPI, SPI flash,
467keyboard, real-time clock, USB. Video is in progress.
468
469Device Tree
470-----------
471x86 uses device tree to configure the board thus requires CONFIG_OF_CONTROL to
472be turned on. Not every device on the board is configured via device tree, but
473more and more devices will be added as time goes by. Check out the directory
474arch/x86/dts/ for these device tree source files.
475
476Useful Commands
477---------------
478In keeping with the U-Boot philosophy of providing functions to check and
479adjust internal settings, there are several x86-specific commands that may be
480useful:
481
482fsp  - Display information about Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP).
483	 This is only available on platforms which use FSP, mostly Atom.
484iod  - Display I/O memory
485iow  - Write I/O memory
486mtrr - List and set the Memory Type Range Registers (MTRR). These are used to
487	 tell the CPU whether memory is cacheable and if so the cache write
488	 mode to use. U-Boot sets up some reasonable values but you can
489	 adjust then with this command.
490
491Booting Ubuntu
492--------------
493As an example of how to set up your boot flow with U-Boot, here are
494instructions for starting Ubuntu from U-Boot. These instructions have been
495tested on Minnowboard MAX with a SATA drive but are equally applicable on
496other platforms and other media. There are really only four steps and it's a
497very simple script, but a more detailed explanation is provided here for
498completeness.
499
500Note: It is possible to set up U-Boot to boot automatically using syslinux.
501It could also use the grub.cfg file (/efi/ubuntu/grub.cfg) to obtain the
502GUID. If you figure these out, please post patches to this README.
503
504Firstly, you will need Ubuntu installed on an available disk. It should be
505possible to make U-Boot start a USB start-up disk but for now let's assume
506that you used another boot loader to install Ubuntu.
507
508Use the U-Boot command line to find the UUID of the partition you want to
509boot. For example our disk is SCSI device 0:
510
511=> part list scsi 0
512
513Partition Map for SCSI device 0  --   Partition Type: EFI
514
515   Part	Start LBA	End LBA		Name
516	Attributes
517	Type GUID
518	Partition GUID
519   1	0x00000800	0x001007ff	""
520	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
521	type:	c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
522	guid:	9d02e8e4-4d59-408f-a9b0-fd497bc9291c
523   2	0x00100800	0x037d8fff	""
524	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
525	type:	0fc63daf-8483-4772-8e79-3d69d8477de4
526	guid:	965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059
527   3	0x037d9000	0x03ba27ff	""
528	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
529	type:	0657fd6d-a4ab-43c4-84e5-0933c84b4f4f
530	guid:	2c4282bd-1e82-4bcf-a5ff-51dedbf39f17
531   =>
532
533This shows that your SCSI disk has three partitions. The really long hex
534strings are called Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). You can look up the
535'type' ones here [11]. On this disk the first partition is for EFI and is in
536VFAT format (DOS/Windows):
537
538   => fatls scsi 0:1
539               efi/
540
541   0 file(s), 1 dir(s)
542
543
544Partition 2 is 'Linux filesystem data' so that will be our root disk. It is
545in ext2 format:
546
547   => ext2ls scsi 0:2
548   <DIR>       4096 .
549   <DIR>       4096 ..
550   <DIR>      16384 lost+found
551   <DIR>       4096 boot
552   <DIR>      12288 etc
553   <DIR>       4096 media
554   <DIR>       4096 bin
555   <DIR>       4096 dev
556   <DIR>       4096 home
557   <DIR>       4096 lib
558   <DIR>       4096 lib64
559   <DIR>       4096 mnt
560   <DIR>       4096 opt
561   <DIR>       4096 proc
562   <DIR>       4096 root
563   <DIR>       4096 run
564   <DIR>      12288 sbin
565   <DIR>       4096 srv
566   <DIR>       4096 sys
567   <DIR>       4096 tmp
568   <DIR>       4096 usr
569   <DIR>       4096 var
570   <SYM>         33 initrd.img
571   <SYM>         30 vmlinuz
572   <DIR>       4096 cdrom
573   <SYM>         33 initrd.img.old
574   =>
575
576and if you look in the /boot directory you will see the kernel:
577
578   => ext2ls scsi 0:2 /boot
579   <DIR>       4096 .
580   <DIR>       4096 ..
581   <DIR>       4096 efi
582   <DIR>       4096 grub
583            3381262 System.map-3.13.0-32-generic
584            1162712 abi-3.13.0-32-generic
585             165611 config-3.13.0-32-generic
586             176500 memtest86+.bin
587             178176 memtest86+.elf
588             178680 memtest86+_multiboot.bin
589            5798112 vmlinuz-3.13.0-32-generic
590             165762 config-3.13.0-58-generic
591            1165129 abi-3.13.0-58-generic
592            5823136 vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic
593           19215259 initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic
594            3391763 System.map-3.13.0-58-generic
595            5825048 vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic.efi.signed
596           28304443 initrd.img-3.13.0-32-generic
597   =>
598
599The 'vmlinuz' files contain a packaged Linux kernel. The format is a kind of
600self-extracting compressed file mixed with some 'setup' configuration data.
601Despite its size (uncompressed it is >10MB) this only includes a basic set of
602device drivers, enough to boot on most hardware types.
603
604The 'initrd' files contain a RAM disk. This is something that can be loaded
605into RAM and will appear to Linux like a disk. Ubuntu uses this to hold lots
606of drivers for whatever hardware you might have. It is loaded before the
607real root disk is accessed.
608
609The numbers after the end of each file are the version. Here it is Linux
610version 3.13. You can find the source code for this in the Linux tree with
611the tag v3.13. The '.0' allows for additional Linux releases to fix problems,
612but normally this is not needed. The '-58' is used by Ubuntu. Each time they
613release a new kernel they increment this number. New Ubuntu versions might
614include kernel patches to fix reported bugs. Stable kernels can exist for
615some years so this number can get quite high.
616
617The '.efi.signed' kernel is signed for EFI's secure boot. U-Boot has its own
618secure boot mechanism - see [12] [13] and cannot read .efi files at present.
619
620To boot Ubuntu from U-Boot the steps are as follows:
621
6221. Set up the boot arguments. Use the GUID for the partition you want to
623boot:
624
625   => setenv bootargs root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro
626
627Here root= tells Linux the location of its root disk. The disk is specified
628by its GUID, using '/dev/disk/by-partuuid/', a Linux path to a 'directory'
629containing all the GUIDs Linux has found. When it starts up, there will be a
630file in that directory with this name in it. It is also possible to use a
631device name here, see later.
632
6332. Load the kernel. Since it is an ext2/4 filesystem we can do:
634
635   => ext2load scsi 0:2 03000000 /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic
636
637The address 30000000 is arbitrary, but there seem to be problems with using
638small addresses (sometimes Linux cannot find the ramdisk). This is 48MB into
639the start of RAM (which is at 0 on x86).
640
6413. Load the ramdisk (to 64MB):
642
643   => ext2load scsi 0:2 04000000 /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic
644
6454. Start up the kernel. We need to know the size of the ramdisk, but can use
646a variable for that. U-Boot sets 'filesize' to the size of the last file it
647loaded.
648
649   => zboot 03000000 0 04000000 ${filesize}
650
651Type 'help zboot' if you want to see what the arguments are. U-Boot on x86 is
652quite verbose when it boots a kernel. You should see these messages from
653U-Boot:
654
655   Valid Boot Flag
656   Setup Size = 0x00004400
657   Magic signature found
658   Using boot protocol version 2.0c
659   Linux kernel version 3.13.0-58-generic (buildd@allspice) #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 8 02:56:15 UTC 2015
660   Building boot_params at 0x00090000
661   Loading bzImage at address 100000 (5805728 bytes)
662   Magic signature found
663   Initial RAM disk at linear address 0x04000000, size 19215259 bytes
664   Kernel command line: "root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro"
665
666   Starting kernel ...
667
668U-Boot prints out some bootstage timing. This is more useful if you put the
669above commands into a script since then it will be faster.
670
671   Timer summary in microseconds:
672          Mark    Elapsed  Stage
673             0          0  reset
674       241,535    241,535  board_init_r
675     2,421,611  2,180,076  id=64
676     2,421,790        179  id=65
677     2,428,215      6,425  main_loop
678    48,860,584 46,432,369  start_kernel
679
680   Accumulated time:
681                  240,329  ahci
682                1,422,704  vesa display
683
684Now the kernel actually starts: (if you want to examine kernel boot up message
685on the serial console, append "console=ttyS0,115200" to the kernel command line)
686
687   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
688   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
689   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
690   [    0.000000] Linux version 3.13.0-58-generic (buildd@allspice) (gcc version 4.8.2 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1) ) #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 8 02:56:15 UTC 2015 (Ubuntu 3.13.0-58.97-generic 3.13.11-ckt22)
691   [    0.000000] Command line: root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro console=ttyS0,115200
692
693It continues for a long time. Along the way you will see it pick up your
694ramdisk:
695
696   [    0.000000] RAMDISK: [mem 0x04000000-0x05253fff]
697...
698   [    0.788540] Trying to unpack rootfs image as initramfs...
699   [    1.540111] Freeing initrd memory: 18768K (ffff880004000000 - ffff880005254000)
700...
701
702Later it actually starts using it:
703
704   Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... done.
705
706You should also see your boot disk turn up:
707
708   [    4.357243] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ADATA SP310      5.2  PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
709   [    4.366860] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 62533296 512-byte logical blocks: (32.0 GB/29.8 GiB)
710   [    4.375677] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
711   [    4.381859] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
712   [    4.387452] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
713   [    4.399535]  sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
714
715Linux has found the three partitions (sda1-3). Mercifully it doesn't print out
716the GUIDs. In step 1 above we could have used:
717
718   setenv bootargs root=/dev/sda2 ro
719
720instead of the GUID. However if you add another drive to your board the
721numbering may change whereas the GUIDs will not. So if your boot partition
722becomes sdb2, it will still boot. For embedded systems where you just want to
723boot the first disk, you have that option.
724
725The last thing you will see on the console is mention of plymouth (which
726displays the Ubuntu start-up screen) and a lot of 'Starting' messages:
727
728 * Starting Mount filesystems on boot                                    [ OK ]
729
730After a pause you should see a login screen on your display and you are done.
731
732If you want to put this in a script you can use something like this:
733
734   setenv bootargs root=UUID=b2aaf743-0418-4d90-94cc-3e6108d7d968 ro
735   setenv boot zboot 03000000 0 04000000 \${filesize}
736   setenv bootcmd "ext2load scsi 0:2 03000000 /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic; ext2load scsi 0:2 04000000 /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic; run boot"
737   saveenv
738
739The \ is to tell the shell not to evaluate ${filesize} as part of the setenv
740command.
741
742You can also bake this behaviour into your build by hard-coding the
743environment variables if you add this to minnowmax.h:
744
745#undef CONFIG_BOOTARGS
746#undef CONFIG_BOOTCOMMAND
747
748#define CONFIG_BOOTARGS		\
749	"root=/dev/sda2 ro"
750#define CONFIG_BOOTCOMMAND	\
751	"ext2load scsi 0:2 03000000 /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic; " \
752	"ext2load scsi 0:2 04000000 /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic; " \
753	"run boot"
754
755#undef CONFIG_EXTRA_ENV_SETTINGS
756#define CONFIG_EXTRA_ENV_SETTINGS "boot=zboot 03000000 0 04000000 ${filesize}"
757
758Test with SeaBIOS
759-----------------
760SeaBIOS [14] is an open source implementation of a 16-bit x86 BIOS. It can run
761in an emulator or natively on x86 hardware with the use of U-Boot. With its
762help, we can boot some OSes that require 16-bit BIOS services like Windows/DOS.
763
764As U-Boot, we have to manually create a table where SeaBIOS gets various system
765information (eg: E820) from. The table unfortunately has to follow the coreboot
766table format as SeaBIOS currently supports booting as a coreboot payload.
767
768To support loading SeaBIOS, U-Boot should be built with CONFIG_SEABIOS on.
769Booting SeaBIOS is done via U-Boot's bootelf command, like below:
770
771   => tftp bios.bin.elf;bootelf
772   Using e1000#0 device
773   TFTP from server 10.10.0.100; our IP address is 10.10.0.108
774   ...
775   Bytes transferred = 122124 (1dd0c hex)
776   ## Starting application at 0x000ff06e ...
777   SeaBIOS (version rel-1.9.0)
778   ...
779
780bios.bin.elf is the SeaBIOS image built from SeaBIOS source tree.
781Make sure it is built as follows:
782
783   $ make menuconfig
784
785Inside the "General Features" menu, select "Build for coreboot" as the
786"Build Target". Inside the "Debugging" menu, turn on "Serial port debugging"
787so that we can see something as soon as SeaBIOS boots. Leave other options
788as in their default state. Then,
789
790   $ make
791   ...
792   Total size: 121888  Fixed: 66496  Free: 9184 (used 93.0% of 128KiB rom)
793   Creating out/bios.bin.elf
794
795Currently this is tested on QEMU x86 target with U-Boot chain-loading SeaBIOS
796to install/boot a Windows XP OS (below for example command to install Windows).
797
798   # Create a 10G disk.img as the virtual hard disk
799   $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 disk.img 10G
800
801   # Install a Windows XP OS from an ISO image 'winxp.iso'
802   $ qemu-system-i386 -serial stdio -bios u-boot.rom -hda disk.img -cdrom winxp.iso -smp 2 -m 512
803
804   # Boot a Windows XP OS installed on the virutal hard disk
805   $ qemu-system-i386 -serial stdio -bios u-boot.rom -hda disk.img -smp 2 -m 512
806
807This is also tested on Intel Crown Bay board with a PCIe graphics card, booting
808SeaBIOS then chain-loading a GRUB on a USB drive, then Linux kernel finally.
809
810If you are using Intel Integrated Graphics Device (IGD) as the primary display
811device on your board, SeaBIOS needs to be patched manually to get its VGA ROM
812loaded and run by SeaBIOS. SeaBIOS locates VGA ROM via the PCI expansion ROM
813register, but IGD device does not have its VGA ROM mapped by this register.
814Its VGA ROM is packaged as part of u-boot.rom at a configurable flash address
815which is unknown to SeaBIOS. An example patch is needed for SeaBIOS below:
816
817diff --git a/src/optionroms.c b/src/optionroms.c
818index 65f7fe0..c7b6f5e 100644
819--- a/src/optionroms.c
820+++ b/src/optionroms.c
821@@ -324,6 +324,8 @@ init_pcirom(struct pci_device *pci, int isvga, u64 *sources)
822         rom = deploy_romfile(file);
823     else if (RunPCIroms > 1 || (RunPCIroms == 1 && isvga))
824         rom = map_pcirom(pci);
825+    if (pci->bdf == pci_to_bdf(0, 2, 0))
826+        rom = (struct rom_header *)0xfff90000;
827     if (! rom)
828         // No ROM present.
829         return;
830
831Note: the patch above expects IGD device is at PCI b.d.f 0.2.0 and its VGA ROM
832is at 0xfff90000 which corresponds to CONFIG_VGA_BIOS_ADDR on Minnowboard MAX.
833Change these two accordingly if this is not the case on your board.
834
835Development Flow
836----------------
837These notes are for those who want to port U-Boot to a new x86 platform.
838
839Since x86 CPUs boot from SPI flash, a SPI flash emulator is a good investment.
840The Dediprog em100 can be used on Linux. The em100 tool is available here:
841
842   http://review.coreboot.org/p/em100.git
843
844On Minnowboard Max the following command line can be used:
845
846   sudo em100 -s -p LOW -d u-boot.rom -c W25Q64DW -r
847
848A suitable clip for connecting over the SPI flash chip is here:
849
850   http://www.dediprog.com/pd/programmer-accessories/EM-TC-8
851
852This allows you to override the SPI flash contents for development purposes.
853Typically you can write to the em100 in around 1200ms, considerably faster
854than programming the real flash device each time. The only important
855limitation of the em100 is that it only supports SPI bus speeds up to 20MHz.
856This means that images must be set to boot with that speed. This is an
857Intel-specific feature - e.g. tools/ifttool has an option to set the SPI
858speed in the SPI descriptor region.
859
860If your chip/board uses an Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP) it is fairly
861easy to fit it in. You can follow the Minnowboard Max implementation, for
862example. Hopefully you will just need to create new files similar to those
863in arch/x86/cpu/baytrail which provide Bay Trail support.
864
865If you are not using an FSP you have more freedom and more responsibility.
866The ivybridge support works this way, although it still uses a ROM for
867graphics and still has binary blobs containing Intel code. You should aim to
868support all important peripherals on your platform including video and storage.
869Use the device tree for configuration where possible.
870
871For the microcode you can create a suitable device tree file using the
872microcode tool:
873
874  ./tools/microcode-tool -d microcode.dat -m <model> create
875
876or if you only have header files and not the full Intel microcode.dat database:
877
878  ./tools/microcode-tool -H BAY_TRAIL_FSP_KIT/Microcode/M0130673322.h \
879	-H BAY_TRAIL_FSP_KIT/Microcode/M0130679901.h \
880	-m all create
881
882These are written to arch/x86/dts/microcode/ by default.
883
884Note that it is possible to just add the micrcode for your CPU if you know its
885model. U-Boot prints this information when it starts
886
887   CPU: x86_64, vendor Intel, device 30673h
888
889so here we can use the M0130673322 file.
890
891If you platform can display POST codes on two little 7-segment displays on
892the board, then you can use post_code() calls from C or assembler to monitor
893boot progress. This can be good for debugging.
894
895If not, you can try to get serial working as early as possible. The early
896debug serial port may be useful here. See setup_internal_uart() for an example.
897
898During the U-Boot porting, one of the important steps is to write correct PIRQ
899routing information in the board device tree. Without it, device drivers in the
900Linux kernel won't function correctly due to interrupt is not working. Please
901refer to U-Boot doc [15] for the device tree bindings of Intel interrupt router.
902Here we have more details on the intel,pirq-routing property below.
903
904	intel,pirq-routing = <
905		PCI_BDF(0, 2, 0) INTA PIRQA
906		...
907	>;
908
909As you see each entry has 3 cells. For the first one, we need describe all pci
910devices mounted on the board. For SoC devices, normally there is a chapter on
911the chipset datasheet which lists all the available PCI devices. For example on
912Bay Trail, this is chapter 4.3 (PCI configuration space). For the second one, we
913can get the interrupt pin either from datasheet or hardware via U-Boot shell.
914The reliable source is the hardware as sometimes chipset datasheet is not 100%
915up-to-date. Type 'pci header' plus the device's pci bus/device/function number
916from U-Boot shell below.
917
918  => pci header 0.1e.1
919    vendor ID =			0x8086
920    device ID =			0x0f08
921    ...
922    interrupt line =		0x09
923    interrupt pin =		0x04
924    ...
925
926It shows this PCI device is using INTD pin as it reports 4 in the interrupt pin
927register. Repeat this until you get interrupt pins for all the devices. The last
928cell is the PIRQ line which a particular interrupt pin is mapped to. On Intel
929chipset, the power-up default mapping is INTA/B/C/D maps to PIRQA/B/C/D. This
930can be changed by registers in LPC bridge. So far Intel FSP does not touch those
931registers so we can write down the PIRQ according to the default mapping rule.
932
933Once we get the PIRQ routing information in the device tree, the interrupt
934allocation and assignment will be done by U-Boot automatically. Now you can
935enable CONFIG_GENERATE_PIRQ_TABLE for testing Linux kernel using i8259 PIC and
936CONFIG_GENERATE_MP_TABLE for testing Linux kernel using local APIC and I/O APIC.
937
938This script might be useful. If you feed it the output of 'pci long' from
939U-Boot then it will generate a device tree fragment with the interrupt
940configuration for each device (note it needs gawk 4.0.0):
941
942   $ cat console_output |awk '/PCI/ {device=$4} /interrupt line/ {line=$4} \
943	/interrupt pin/ {pin = $4; if (pin != "0x00" && pin != "0xff") \
944	{patsplit(device, bdf, "[0-9a-f]+"); \
945	printf "PCI_BDF(%d, %d, %d) INT%c PIRQ%c\n", strtonum("0x" bdf[1]), \
946	strtonum("0x" bdf[2]), bdf[3], strtonum(pin) + 64, 64 + strtonum(pin)}}'
947
948Example output:
949   PCI_BDF(0, 2, 0) INTA PIRQA
950   PCI_BDF(0, 3, 0) INTA PIRQA
951...
952
953Porting Hints
954-------------
955
956Quark-specific considerations:
957
958To port U-Boot to other boards based on the Intel Quark SoC, a few things need
959to be taken care of. The first important part is the Memory Reference Code (MRC)
960parameters. Quark MRC supports memory-down configuration only. All these MRC
961parameters are supplied via the board device tree. To get started, first copy
962the MRC section of arch/x86/dts/galileo.dts to your board's device tree, then
963change these values by consulting board manuals or your hardware vendor.
964Available MRC parameter values are listed in include/dt-bindings/mrc/quark.h.
965The other tricky part is with PCIe. Quark SoC integrates two PCIe root ports,
966but by default they are held in reset after power on. In U-Boot, PCIe
967initialization is properly handled as per Quark's firmware writer guide.
968In your board support codes, you need provide two routines to aid PCIe
969initialization, which are board_assert_perst() and board_deassert_perst().
970The two routines need implement a board-specific mechanism to assert/deassert
971PCIe PERST# pin. Care must be taken that in those routines that any APIs that
972may trigger PCI enumeration process are strictly forbidden, as any access to
973PCIe root port's configuration registers will cause system hang while it is
974held in reset. For more details, check how they are implemented by the Intel
975Galileo board support codes in board/intel/galileo/galileo.c.
976
977coreboot:
978
979See scripts/coreboot.sed which can assist with porting coreboot code into
980U-Boot drivers. It will not resolve all build errors, but will perform common
981transformations. Remember to add attribution to coreboot for new files added
982to U-Boot. This should go at the top of each file and list the coreboot
983filename where the code originated.
984
985Debugging ACPI issues with Windows:
986
987Windows might cache system information and only detect ACPI changes if you
988modify the ACPI table versions. So tweak them liberally when debugging ACPI
989issues with Windows.
990
991ACPI Support Status
992-------------------
993Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) [16] aims to establish
994industry-standard interfaces enabling OS-directed configuration, power
995management, and thermal management of mobile, desktop, and server platforms.
996
997Linux can boot without ACPI with "acpi=off" command line parameter, but
998with ACPI the kernel gains the capabilities to handle power management.
999For Windows, ACPI is a must-have firmware feature since Windows Vista.
1000CONFIG_GENERATE_ACPI_TABLE is the config option to turn on ACPI support in
1001U-Boot. This requires Intel ACPI compiler to be installed on your host to
1002compile ACPI DSDT table written in ASL format to AML format. You can get
1003the compiler via "apt-get install iasl" if you are on Ubuntu or download
1004the source from [17] to compile one by yourself.
1005
1006Current ACPI support in U-Boot is not complete. More features will be added
1007in the future. The status as of today is:
1008
1009 * Support generating RSDT, XSDT, FACS, FADT, MADT, MCFG tables.
1010 * Support one static DSDT table only, compiled by Intel ACPI compiler.
1011 * Support S0/S5, reboot and shutdown from OS.
1012 * Support booting a pre-installed Ubuntu distribution via 'zboot' command.
1013 * Support installing and booting Ubuntu 14.04 (or above) from U-Boot with
1014   the help of SeaBIOS using legacy interface (non-UEFI mode).
1015 * Support installing and booting Windows 8.1/10 from U-Boot with the help
1016   of SeaBIOS using legacy interface (non-UEFI mode).
1017 * Support ACPI interrupts with SCI only.
1018
1019Features not supported so far (to make it a complete ACPI solution):
1020 * S3 (Suspend to RAM), S4 (Suspend to Disk).
1021
1022Features that are optional:
1023 * ACPI global NVS support. We may need it to simplify ASL code logic if
1024   utilizing NVS variables. Most likely we will need this sooner or later.
1025 * Dynamic AML bytecodes insertion at run-time. We may need this to support
1026   SSDT table generation and DSDT fix up.
1027 * SMI support. Since U-Boot is a modern bootloader, we don't want to bring
1028   those legacy stuff into U-Boot. ACPI spec allows a system that does not
1029   support SMI (a legacy-free system).
1030
1031So far ACPI is enabled on BayTrail based boards. Testing was done by booting
1032a pre-installed Ubuntu 14.04 from a SATA drive. Installing Ubuntu 14.04 and
1033Windows 8.1/10 to a SATA drive and booting from there is also tested. Most
1034devices seem to work correctly and the board can respond a reboot/shutdown
1035command from the OS.
1036
1037TODO List
1038---------
1039- Audio
1040- Chrome OS verified boot
1041
1042References
1043----------
1044[1] http://www.coreboot.org
1045[2] http://www.qemu.org
1046[3] http://www.coreboot.org/~stepan/pci8086,0166.rom
1047[4] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/design-tools/evaluation-platforms/atom-e660-eg20t-development-kit.html
1048[5] http://www.intel.com/fsp
1049[6] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/intelligent-systems/privileged/e6xx-35-b1-cmc22211.html
1050[7] http://www.ami.com/products/bios-uefi-tools-and-utilities/bios-uefi-utilities/
1051[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode
1052[9] http://simplefirmware.org
1053[10] http://www.intel.com/design/archives/processors/pro/docs/242016.htm
1054[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
1055[12] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/chromeos_and_diy_vboot_0.pdf
1056[13] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/elce-2014.pdf
1057[14] http://www.seabios.org/SeaBIOS
1058[15] doc/device-tree-bindings/misc/intel,irq-router.txt
1059[16] http://www.acpi.info
1060[17] https://www.acpica.org/downloads
1061