xref: /openbmc/u-boot/doc/README.x86 (revision d08957e6)
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
27   - Cougar Canyon 2 CRB
28   - Crown Bay CRB
29   - Galileo
30   - Link (Chromebook Pixel)
31   - Minnowboard MAX
32   - Samus (Chromebook Pixel 2015)
33   - QEMU x86
34
35As for loading an OS, U-Boot supports directly booting a 32-bit or 64-bit
36Linux kernel as part of a FIT image. It also supports a compressed zImage.
37U-Boot supports loading an x86 VxWorks kernel. Please check README.vxworks
38for more details.
39
40Build Instructions for U-Boot as coreboot payload
41-------------------------------------------------
42Building U-Boot as a coreboot payload is just like building U-Boot for targets
43on other architectures, like below:
44
45$ make coreboot-x86_defconfig
46$ make all
47
48Note this default configuration will build a U-Boot payload for the QEMU board.
49To build a coreboot payload against another board, you can change the build
50configuration during the 'make menuconfig' process.
51
52x86 architecture  --->
53	...
54	(qemu-x86) Board configuration file
55	(qemu-x86_i440fx) Board Device Tree Source (dts) file
56	(0x01920000) Board specific Cache-As-RAM (CAR) address
57	(0x4000) Board specific Cache-As-RAM (CAR) size
58
59Change the 'Board configuration file' and 'Board Device Tree Source (dts) file'
60to point to a new board. You can also change the Cache-As-RAM (CAR) related
61settings here if the default values do not fit your new board.
62
63Build Instructions for U-Boot as BIOS replacement (bare mode)
64-------------------------------------------------------------
65Building a ROM version of U-Boot (hereafter referred to as u-boot.rom) is a
66little bit tricky, as generally it requires several binary blobs which are not
67shipped in the U-Boot source tree. Due to this reason, the u-boot.rom build is
68not turned on by default in the U-Boot source tree. Firstly, you need turn it
69on by enabling the ROM build:
70
71$ export BUILD_ROM=y
72
73This tells the Makefile to build u-boot.rom as a target.
74
75---
76
77Chromebook Link specific instructions for bare mode:
78
79First, you need the following binary blobs:
80
81* descriptor.bin - Intel flash descriptor
82* me.bin - Intel Management Engine
83* mrc.bin - Memory Reference Code, which sets up SDRAM
84* video ROM - sets up the display
85
86You can get these binary blobs by:
87
88$ git clone http://review.coreboot.org/p/blobs.git
89$ cd blobs
90
91Find the following files:
92
93* ./mainboard/google/link/descriptor.bin
94* ./mainboard/google/link/me.bin
95* ./northbridge/intel/sandybridge/systemagent-r6.bin
96
97The 3rd one should be renamed to mrc.bin.
98As for the video ROM, you can get it here [3] and rename it to vga.bin.
99Make sure all these binary blobs are put in the board directory.
100
101Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom:
102
103$ make chromebook_link_defconfig
104$ make all
105
106---
107
108Chromebook Samus (2015 Pixel) instructions for bare mode:
109
110First, you need the following binary blobs:
111
112* descriptor.bin - Intel flash descriptor
113* me.bin - Intel Management Engine
114* mrc.bin - Memory Reference Code, which sets up SDRAM
115* refcode.elf - Additional Reference code
116* vga.bin - video ROM, which sets up the display
117
118If you have a samus you can obtain them from your flash, for example, in
119developer mode on the Chromebook (use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to obtain a terminal and
120log in as 'root'):
121
122   cd /tmp
123   flashrom -w samus.bin
124   scp samus.bin username@ip_address:/path/to/somewhere
125
126If not see the coreboot tree [4] where you can use:
127
128   bash crosfirmware.sh samus
129
130to get the image. There is also an 'extract_blobs.sh' scripts that you can use
131on the 'coreboot-Google_Samus.*' file to short-circuit some of the below.
132
133Then 'ifdtool -x samus.bin' on your development machine will produce:
134
135   flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin
136   flashregion_1_bios.bin
137   flashregion_2_intel_me.bin
138
139Rename flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin to descriptor.bin
140Rename flashregion_2_intel_me.bin to me.bin
141You can ignore flashregion_1_bios.bin - it is not used.
142
143To get the rest, use 'cbfstool samus.bin print':
144
145samus.bin: 8192 kB, bootblocksize 2864, romsize 8388608, offset 0x700000
146alignment: 64 bytes, architecture: x86
147
148Name                           Offset     Type         Size
149cmos_layout.bin                0x700000   cmos_layout  1164
150pci8086,0406.rom               0x7004c0   optionrom    65536
151spd.bin                        0x710500   (unknown)    4096
152cpu_microcode_blob.bin         0x711540   microcode    70720
153fallback/romstage              0x722a00   stage        54210
154fallback/ramstage              0x72fe00   stage        96382
155config                         0x7476c0   raw          6075
156fallback/vboot                 0x748ec0   stage        15980
157fallback/refcode               0x74cd80   stage        75578
158fallback/payload               0x75f500   payload      62878
159u-boot.dtb                     0x76eb00   (unknown)    5318
160(empty)                        0x770000   null         196504
161mrc.bin                        0x79ffc0   (unknown)    222876
162(empty)                        0x7d66c0   null         167320
163
164You can extract what you need:
165
166   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n pci8086,0406.rom -f vga.bin
167   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n fallback/refcode -f refcode.rmod
168   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n mrc.bin -f mrc.bin
169   cbfstool samus.bin extract -n fallback/refcode -f refcode.bin -U
170
171Note that the -U flag is only supported by the latest cbfstool. It unpacks
172and decompresses the stage to produce a coreboot rmodule. This is a simple
173representation of an ELF file. You need the patch "Support decoding a stage
174with compression".
175
176Put all 5 files into board/google/chromebook_samus.
177
178Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom:
179
180$ make chromebook_link_defconfig
181$ make all
182
183If you are using em100, then this command will flash write -Boot:
184
185   em100 -s -d filename.rom -c W25Q64CV -r
186
187---
188
189Intel Crown Bay specific instructions for bare mode:
190
191U-Boot support of Intel Crown Bay board [4] relies on a binary blob called
192Firmware Support Package [5] to perform all the necessary initialization steps
193as documented in the BIOS Writer Guide, including initialization of the CPU,
194memory controller, chipset and certain bus interfaces.
195
196Download the Intel FSP for Atom E6xx series and Platform Controller Hub EG20T,
197install it on your host and locate the FSP binary blob. Note this platform
198also requires a Chipset Micro Code (CMC) state machine binary to be present in
199the SPI flash where u-boot.rom resides, and this CMC binary blob can be found
200in this FSP package too.
201
202* ./FSP/QUEENSBAY_FSP_GOLD_001_20-DECEMBER-2013.fd
203* ./Microcode/C0_22211.BIN
204
205Rename the first one to fsp.bin and second one to cmc.bin and put them in the
206board directory.
207
208Note the FSP release version 001 has a bug which could cause random endless
209loop during the FspInit call. This bug was published by Intel although Intel
210did not describe any details. We need manually apply the patch to the FSP
211binary using any hex editor (eg: bvi). Go to the offset 0x1fcd8 of the FSP
212binary, change the following five bytes values from orginally E8 42 FF FF FF
213to B8 00 80 0B 00.
214
215As for the video ROM, you need manually extract it from the Intel provided
216BIOS for Crown Bay here [6], using the AMI MMTool [7]. Check PCI option ROM
217ID 8086:4108, extract and save it as vga.bin in the board directory.
218
219Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
220
221$ make crownbay_defconfig
222$ make all
223
224---
225
226Intel Cougar Canyon 2 specific instructions for bare mode:
227
228This uses Intel FSP for 3rd generation Intel Core and Intel Celeron processors
229with mobile Intel HM76 and QM77 chipsets platform. Download it from Intel FSP
230website and put the .fd file (CHIEFRIVER_FSP_GOLD_001_09-OCTOBER-2013.fd at the
231time of writing) in the board directory and rename it to fsp.bin.
232
233Now build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
234
235$ make cougarcanyon2_defconfig
236$ make all
237
238The board has two 8MB SPI flashes mounted, which are called SPI-0 and SPI-1 in
239the board manual. The SPI-0 flash should have flash descriptor plus ME firmware
240and SPI-1 flash is used to store U-Boot. For convenience, the complete 8MB SPI-0
241flash image is included in the FSP package (named Rom00_8M_MB_PPT.bin). Program
242this image to the SPI-0 flash according to the board manual just once and we are
243all set. For programming U-Boot we just need to program SPI-1 flash.
244
245---
246
247Intel Bay Trail based board instructions for bare mode:
248
249This uses as FSP as with Crown Bay, except it is for the Atom E3800 series.
250Two boards that use this configuration are Bayley Bay and Minnowboard MAX.
251Download this and get the .fd file (BAYTRAIL_FSP_GOLD_003_16-SEP-2014.fd at
252the time of writing). Put it in the corresponding board directory and rename
253it to fsp.bin.
254
255Obtain the VGA RAM (Vga.dat at the time of writing) and put it into the same
256board directory as vga.bin.
257
258You still need two more binary blobs. For Bayley Bay, they can be extracted
259from the sample SPI image provided in the FSP (SPI.bin at the time of writing).
260
261   $ ./tools/ifdtool -x BayleyBay/SPI.bin
262   $ cp flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin board/intel/bayleybay/descriptor.bin
263   $ cp flashregion_2_intel_me.bin board/intel/bayleybay/me.bin
264
265For Minnowboard MAX, we can reuse the same ME firmware above, but for flash
266descriptor, we need get that somewhere else, as the one above does not seem to
267work, probably because it is not designed for the Minnowboard MAX. Now download
268the original firmware image for this board from:
269
270http://firmware.intel.com/sites/default/files/2014-WW42.4-MinnowBoardMax.73-64-bit.bin_Release.zip
271
272Unzip it:
273
274   $ unzip 2014-WW42.4-MinnowBoardMax.73-64-bit.bin_Release.zip
275
276Use ifdtool in the U-Boot tools directory to extract the images from that
277file, for example:
278
279   $ ./tools/ifdtool -x MNW2MAX1.X64.0073.R02.1409160934.bin
280
281This will provide the descriptor file - copy this into the correct place:
282
283   $ cp flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin board/intel/minnowmax/descriptor.bin
284
285Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
286Note: below are examples/information for Minnowboard MAX.
287
288$ make minnowmax_defconfig
289$ make all
290
291Checksums are as follows (but note that newer versions will invalidate this):
292
293$ md5sum -b board/intel/minnowmax/*.bin
294ffda9a3b94df5b74323afb328d51e6b4  board/intel/minnowmax/descriptor.bin
29569f65b9a580246291d20d08cbef9d7c5  board/intel/minnowmax/fsp.bin
296894a97d371544ec21de9c3e8e1716c4b  board/intel/minnowmax/me.bin
297a2588537da387da592a27219d56e9962  board/intel/minnowmax/vga.bin
298
299The ROM image is broken up into these parts:
300
301Offset   Description         Controlling config
302------------------------------------------------------------
303000000   descriptor.bin      Hard-coded to 0 in ifdtool
304001000   me.bin              Set by the descriptor
305500000   <spare>
3066f0000   MRC cache           CONFIG_ENABLE_MRC_CACHE
307700000   u-boot-dtb.bin      CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE
308790000   vga.bin             CONFIG_VGA_BIOS_ADDR
3097c0000   fsp.bin             CONFIG_FSP_ADDR
3107f8000   <spare>             (depends on size of fsp.bin)
3117fe000   Environment         CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET
3127ff800   U-Boot 16-bit boot  CONFIG_SYS_X86_START16
313
314Overall ROM image size is controlled by CONFIG_ROM_SIZE.
315
316---
317
318Intel Galileo instructions for bare mode:
319
320Only one binary blob is needed for Remote Management Unit (RMU) within Intel
321Quark SoC. Not like FSP, U-Boot does not call into the binary. The binary is
322needed by the Quark SoC itself.
323
324You can get the binary blob from Quark Board Support Package from Intel website:
325
326* ./QuarkSocPkg/QuarkNorthCluster/Binary/QuarkMicrocode/RMU.bin
327
328Rename the file and put it to the board directory by:
329
330   $ cp RMU.bin board/intel/galileo/rmu.bin
331
332Now you can build U-Boot and obtain u-boot.rom
333
334$ make galileo_defconfig
335$ make all
336
337---
338
339QEMU x86 target instructions for bare mode:
340
341To build u-boot.rom for QEMU x86 targets, just simply run
342
343$ make qemu-x86_defconfig
344$ make all
345
346Note this default configuration will build a U-Boot for the QEMU x86 i440FX
347board. To build a U-Boot against QEMU x86 Q35 board, you can change the build
348configuration during the 'make menuconfig' process like below:
349
350Device Tree Control  --->
351	...
352	(qemu-x86_q35) Default Device Tree for DT control
353
354Test with coreboot
355------------------
356For testing U-Boot as the coreboot payload, there are things that need be paid
357attention to. coreboot supports loading an ELF executable and a 32-bit plain
358binary, as well as other supported payloads. With the default configuration,
359U-Boot is set up to use a separate Device Tree Blob (dtb). As of today, the
360generated u-boot-dtb.bin needs to be packaged by the cbfstool utility (a tool
361provided by coreboot) manually as coreboot's 'make menuconfig' does not provide
362this capability yet. The command is as follows:
363
364# in the coreboot root directory
365$ ./build/util/cbfstool/cbfstool build/coreboot.rom add-flat-binary \
366  -f u-boot-dtb.bin -n fallback/payload -c lzma -l 0x1110000 -e 0x1110000
367
368Make sure 0x1110000 matches CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE, which is the symbol address
369of _x86boot_start (in arch/x86/cpu/start.S).
370
371If you want to use ELF as the coreboot payload, change U-Boot configuration to
372use CONFIG_OF_EMBED instead of CONFIG_OF_SEPARATE.
373
374To enable video you must enable these options in coreboot:
375
376   - Set framebuffer graphics resolution (1280x1024 32k-color (1:5:5))
377   - Keep VESA framebuffer
378
379At present it seems that for Minnowboard Max, coreboot does not pass through
380the video information correctly (it always says the resolution is 0x0). This
381works correctly for link though.
382
383Test with QEMU for bare mode
384----------------------------
385QEMU is a fancy emulator that can enable us to test U-Boot without access to
386a real x86 board. Please make sure your QEMU version is 2.3.0 or above test
387U-Boot. To launch QEMU with u-boot.rom, call QEMU as follows:
388
389$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom
390
391This will instantiate an emulated x86 board with i440FX and PIIX chipset. QEMU
392also supports emulating an x86 board with Q35 and ICH9 based chipset, which is
393also supported by U-Boot. To instantiate such a machine, call QEMU with:
394
395$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -M q35
396
397Note by default QEMU instantiated boards only have 128 MiB system memory. But
398it is enough to have U-Boot boot and function correctly. You can increase the
399system memory by pass '-m' parameter to QEMU if you want more memory:
400
401$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -m 1024
402
403This creates a board with 1 GiB system memory. Currently U-Boot for QEMU only
404supports 3 GiB maximum system memory and reserves the last 1 GiB address space
405for PCI device memory-mapped I/O and other stuff, so the maximum value of '-m'
406would be 3072.
407
408QEMU emulates a graphic card which U-Boot supports. Removing '-nographic' will
409show QEMU's VGA console window. Note this will disable QEMU's serial output.
410If you want to check both consoles, use '-serial stdio'.
411
412Multicore is also supported by QEMU via '-smp n' where n is the number of cores
413to instantiate. Note, the maximum supported CPU number in QEMU is 255.
414
415The fw_cfg interface in QEMU also provides information about kernel data, initrd,
416command-line arguments and more. U-Boot supports directly accessing these informtion
417from fw_cfg interface, this saves the time of loading them from hard disk or
418network again, through emulated devices. To use it , simply providing them in
419QEMU command line:
420
421$ qemu-system-i386 -nographic -bios path/to/u-boot.rom -m 1024 -kernel /path/to/bzImage
422    -append 'root=/dev/ram console=ttyS0' -initrd /path/to/initrd -smp 8
423
424Note: -initrd and -smp are both optional
425
426Then start QEMU, in U-Boot command line use the following U-Boot command to setup kernel:
427
428 => qfw
429qfw - QEMU firmware interface
430
431Usage:
432qfw <command>
433    - list                             : print firmware(s) currently loaded
434    - cpus                             : print online cpu number
435    - load <kernel addr> <initrd addr> : load kernel and initrd (if any) and setup for zboot
436
437=> qfw load
438loading kernel to address 01000000 size 5d9d30 initrd 04000000 size 1b1ab50
439
440Here the kernel (bzImage) is loaded to 01000000 and initrd is to 04000000. Then, 'zboot'
441can be used to boot the kernel:
442
443=> zboot 02000000 - 04000000 1b1ab50
444
445CPU Microcode
446-------------
447Modern CPUs usually require a special bit stream called microcode [8] to be
448loaded on the processor after power up in order to function properly. U-Boot
449has already integrated these as hex dumps in the source tree.
450
451SMP Support
452-----------
453On a multicore system, U-Boot is executed on the bootstrap processor (BSP).
454Additional application processors (AP) can be brought up by U-Boot. In order to
455have an SMP kernel to discover all of the available processors, U-Boot needs to
456prepare configuration tables which contain the multi-CPUs information before
457loading the OS kernel. Currently U-Boot supports generating two types of tables
458for SMP, called Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) [9] and Multi-Processor (MP)
459[10] tables. The writing of these two tables are controlled by two Kconfig
460options GENERATE_SFI_TABLE and GENERATE_MP_TABLE.
461
462Driver Model
463------------
464x86 has been converted to use driver model for serial, GPIO, SPI, SPI flash,
465keyboard, real-time clock, USB. Video is in progress.
466
467Device Tree
468-----------
469x86 uses device tree to configure the board thus requires CONFIG_OF_CONTROL to
470be turned on. Not every device on the board is configured via device tree, but
471more and more devices will be added as time goes by. Check out the directory
472arch/x86/dts/ for these device tree source files.
473
474Useful Commands
475---------------
476In keeping with the U-Boot philosophy of providing functions to check and
477adjust internal settings, there are several x86-specific commands that may be
478useful:
479
480fsp  - Display information about Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP).
481	 This is only available on platforms which use FSP, mostly Atom.
482iod  - Display I/O memory
483iow  - Write I/O memory
484mtrr - List and set the Memory Type Range Registers (MTRR). These are used to
485	 tell the CPU whether memory is cacheable and if so the cache write
486	 mode to use. U-Boot sets up some reasonable values but you can
487	 adjust then with this command.
488
489Booting Ubuntu
490--------------
491As an example of how to set up your boot flow with U-Boot, here are
492instructions for starting Ubuntu from U-Boot. These instructions have been
493tested on Minnowboard MAX with a SATA driver but are equally applicable on
494other platforms and other media. There are really only four steps and its a
495very simple script, but a more detailed explanation is provided here for
496completeness.
497
498Note: It is possible to set up U-Boot to boot automatically using syslinux.
499It could also use the grub.cfg file (/efi/ubuntu/grub.cfg) to obtain the
500GUID. If you figure these out, please post patches to this README.
501
502Firstly, you will need Ubunutu installed on an available disk. It should be
503possible to make U-Boot start a USB start-up disk but for now let's assume
504that you used another boot loader to install Ubuntu.
505
506Use the U-Boot command line to find the UUID of the partition you want to
507boot. For example our disk is SCSI device 0:
508
509=> part list scsi 0
510
511Partition Map for SCSI device 0  --   Partition Type: EFI
512
513   Part	Start LBA	End LBA		Name
514	Attributes
515	Type GUID
516	Partition GUID
517   1	0x00000800	0x001007ff	""
518	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
519	type:	c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
520	guid:	9d02e8e4-4d59-408f-a9b0-fd497bc9291c
521   2	0x00100800	0x037d8fff	""
522	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
523	type:	0fc63daf-8483-4772-8e79-3d69d8477de4
524	guid:	965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059
525   3	0x037d9000	0x03ba27ff	""
526	attrs:	0x0000000000000000
527	type:	0657fd6d-a4ab-43c4-84e5-0933c84b4f4f
528	guid:	2c4282bd-1e82-4bcf-a5ff-51dedbf39f17
529   =>
530
531This shows that your SCSI disk has three partitions. The really long hex
532strings are called Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). You can look up the
533'type' ones here [11]. On this disk the first partition is for EFI and is in
534VFAT format (DOS/Windows):
535
536   => fatls scsi 0:1
537               efi/
538
539   0 file(s), 1 dir(s)
540
541
542Partition 2 is 'Linux filesystem data' so that will be our root disk. It is
543in ext2 format:
544
545   => ext2ls scsi 0:2
546   <DIR>       4096 .
547   <DIR>       4096 ..
548   <DIR>      16384 lost+found
549   <DIR>       4096 boot
550   <DIR>      12288 etc
551   <DIR>       4096 media
552   <DIR>       4096 bin
553   <DIR>       4096 dev
554   <DIR>       4096 home
555   <DIR>       4096 lib
556   <DIR>       4096 lib64
557   <DIR>       4096 mnt
558   <DIR>       4096 opt
559   <DIR>       4096 proc
560   <DIR>       4096 root
561   <DIR>       4096 run
562   <DIR>      12288 sbin
563   <DIR>       4096 srv
564   <DIR>       4096 sys
565   <DIR>       4096 tmp
566   <DIR>       4096 usr
567   <DIR>       4096 var
568   <SYM>         33 initrd.img
569   <SYM>         30 vmlinuz
570   <DIR>       4096 cdrom
571   <SYM>         33 initrd.img.old
572   =>
573
574and if you look in the /boot directory you will see the kernel:
575
576   => ext2ls scsi 0:2 /boot
577   <DIR>       4096 .
578   <DIR>       4096 ..
579   <DIR>       4096 efi
580   <DIR>       4096 grub
581            3381262 System.map-3.13.0-32-generic
582            1162712 abi-3.13.0-32-generic
583             165611 config-3.13.0-32-generic
584             176500 memtest86+.bin
585             178176 memtest86+.elf
586             178680 memtest86+_multiboot.bin
587            5798112 vmlinuz-3.13.0-32-generic
588             165762 config-3.13.0-58-generic
589            1165129 abi-3.13.0-58-generic
590            5823136 vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic
591           19215259 initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic
592            3391763 System.map-3.13.0-58-generic
593            5825048 vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic.efi.signed
594           28304443 initrd.img-3.13.0-32-generic
595   =>
596
597The 'vmlinuz' files contain a packaged Linux kernel. The format is a kind of
598self-extracting compressed file mixed with some 'setup' configuration data.
599Despite its size (uncompressed it is >10MB) this only includes a basic set of
600device drivers, enough to boot on most hardware types.
601
602The 'initrd' files contain a RAM disk. This is something that can be loaded
603into RAM and will appear to Linux like a disk. Ubuntu uses this to hold lots
604of drivers for whatever hardware you might have. It is loaded before the
605real root disk is accessed.
606
607The numbers after the end of each file are the version. Here it is Linux
608version 3.13. You can find the source code for this in the Linux tree with
609the tag v3.13. The '.0' allows for additional Linux releases to fix problems,
610but normally this is not needed. The '-58' is used by Ubuntu. Each time they
611release a new kernel they increment this number. New Ubuntu versions might
612include kernel patches to fix reported bugs. Stable kernels can exist for
613some years so this number can get quite high.
614
615The '.efi.signed' kernel is signed for EFI's secure boot. U-Boot has its own
616secure boot mechanism - see [12] [13] and cannot read .efi files at present.
617
618To boot Ubuntu from U-Boot the steps are as follows:
619
6201. Set up the boot arguments. Use the GUID for the partition you want to
621boot:
622
623   => setenv bootargs root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro
624
625Here root= tells Linux the location of its root disk. The disk is specified
626by its GUID, using '/dev/disk/by-partuuid/', a Linux path to a 'directory'
627containing all the GUIDs Linux has found. When it starts up, there will be a
628file in that directory with this name in it. It is also possible to use a
629device name here, see later.
630
6312. Load the kernel. Since it is an ext2/4 filesystem we can do:
632
633   => ext2load scsi 0:2 03000000 /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic
634
635The address 30000000 is arbitrary, but there seem to be problems with using
636small addresses (sometimes Linux cannot find the ramdisk). This is 48MB into
637the start of RAM (which is at 0 on x86).
638
6393. Load the ramdisk (to 64MB):
640
641   => ext2load scsi 0:2 04000000 /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic
642
6434. Start up the kernel. We need to know the size of the ramdisk, but can use
644a variable for that. U-Boot sets 'filesize' to the size of the last file it
645loaded.
646
647   => zboot 03000000 0 04000000 ${filesize}
648
649Type 'help zboot' if you want to see what the arguments are. U-Boot on x86 is
650quite verbose when it boots a kernel. You should see these messages from
651U-Boot:
652
653   Valid Boot Flag
654   Setup Size = 0x00004400
655   Magic signature found
656   Using boot protocol version 2.0c
657   Linux kernel version 3.13.0-58-generic (buildd@allspice) #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 8 02:56:15 UTC 2015
658   Building boot_params at 0x00090000
659   Loading bzImage at address 100000 (5805728 bytes)
660   Magic signature found
661   Initial RAM disk at linear address 0x04000000, size 19215259 bytes
662   Kernel command line: "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro"
663
664   Starting kernel ...
665
666U-Boot prints out some bootstage timing. This is more useful if you put the
667above commands into a script since then it will be faster.
668
669   Timer summary in microseconds:
670          Mark    Elapsed  Stage
671             0          0  reset
672       241,535    241,535  board_init_r
673     2,421,611  2,180,076  id=64
674     2,421,790        179  id=65
675     2,428,215      6,425  main_loop
676    48,860,584 46,432,369  start_kernel
677
678   Accumulated time:
679                  240,329  ahci
680                1,422,704  vesa display
681
682Now the kernel actually starts:
683
684   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
685   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
686   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
687   [    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)
688   [    0.000000] Command line: console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/965c59ee-1822-4326-90d2-b02446050059 ro
689
690It continues for a long time. Along the way you will see it pick up your
691ramdisk:
692
693   [    0.000000] RAMDISK: [mem 0x04000000-0x05253fff]
694...
695   [    0.788540] Trying to unpack rootfs image as initramfs...
696   [    1.540111] Freeing initrd memory: 18768K (ffff880004000000 - ffff880005254000)
697...
698
699Later it actually starts using it:
700
701   Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... done.
702
703You should also see your boot disk turn up:
704
705   [    4.357243] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ADATA SP310      5.2  PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
706   [    4.366860] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 62533296 512-byte logical blocks: (32.0 GB/29.8 GiB)
707   [    4.375677] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
708   [    4.381859] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
709   [    4.387452] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
710   [    4.399535]  sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
711
712Linux has found the three partitions (sda1-3). Mercifully it doesn't print out
713the GUIDs. In step 1 above we could have used:
714
715   setenv bootargs root=/dev/sda2 ro
716
717instead of the GUID. However if you add another drive to your board the
718numbering may change whereas the GUIDs will not. So if your boot partition
719becomes sdb2, it will still boot. For embedded systems where you just want to
720boot the first disk, you have that option.
721
722The last thing you will see on the console is mention of plymouth (which
723displays the Ubuntu start-up screen) and a lot of 'Starting' messages:
724
725 * Starting Mount filesystems on boot                                    [ OK ]
726
727After a pause you should see a login screen on your display and you are done.
728
729If you want to put this in a script you can use something like this:
730
731   setenv bootargs root=UUID=b2aaf743-0418-4d90-94cc-3e6108d7d968 ro
732   setenv boot zboot 03000000 0 04000000 \${filesize}
733   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"
734   saveenv
735
736The \ is to tell the shell not to evaluate ${filesize} as part of the setenv
737command.
738
739You will also need to add this to your board configuration file, e.g.
740include/configs/minnowmax.h:
741
742   #define CONFIG_BOOTDELAY	2
743
744Now when you reset your board it wait a few seconds (in case you want to
745interrupt) and then should boot straight into Ubuntu.
746
747You can also bake this behaviour into your build by hard-coding the
748environment variables if you add this to minnowmax.h:
749
750#undef CONFIG_BOOTARGS
751#undef CONFIG_BOOTCOMMAND
752
753#define CONFIG_BOOTARGS		\
754	"root=/dev/sda2 ro"
755#define CONFIG_BOOTCOMMAND	\
756	"ext2load scsi 0:2 03000000 /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-58-generic; " \
757	"ext2load scsi 0:2 04000000 /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-58-generic; " \
758	"run boot"
759
760#undef CONFIG_EXTRA_ENV_SETTINGS
761#define CONFIG_EXTRA_ENV_SETTINGS "boot=zboot 03000000 0 04000000 ${filesize}"
762
763Test with SeaBIOS
764-----------------
765SeaBIOS [14] is an open source implementation of a 16-bit x86 BIOS. It can run
766in an emulator or natively on x86 hardware with the use of U-Boot. With its
767help, we can boot some OSes that require 16-bit BIOS services like Windows/DOS.
768
769As U-Boot, we have to manually create a table where SeaBIOS gets various system
770information (eg: E820) from. The table unfortunately has to follow the coreboot
771table format as SeaBIOS currently supports booting as a coreboot payload.
772
773To support loading SeaBIOS, U-Boot should be built with CONFIG_SEABIOS on.
774Booting SeaBIOS is done via U-Boot's bootelf command, like below:
775
776   => tftp bios.bin.elf;bootelf
777   Using e1000#0 device
778   TFTP from server 10.10.0.100; our IP address is 10.10.0.108
779   ...
780   Bytes transferred = 122124 (1dd0c hex)
781   ## Starting application at 0x000ff06e ...
782   SeaBIOS (version rel-1.9.0)
783   ...
784
785bios.bin.elf is the SeaBIOS image built from SeaBIOS source tree.
786Make sure it is built as follows:
787
788   $ make menuconfig
789
790Inside the "General Features" menu, select "Build for coreboot" as the
791"Build Target". Inside the "Debugging" menu, turn on "Serial port debugging"
792so that we can see something as soon as SeaBIOS boots. Leave other options
793as in their default state. Then,
794
795   $ make
796   ...
797   Total size: 121888  Fixed: 66496  Free: 9184 (used 93.0% of 128KiB rom)
798   Creating out/bios.bin.elf
799
800Currently this is tested on QEMU x86 target with U-Boot chain-loading SeaBIOS
801to install/boot a Windows XP OS (below for example command to install Windows).
802
803   # Create a 10G disk.img as the virtual hard disk
804   $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 disk.img 10G
805
806   # Install a Windows XP OS from an ISO image 'winxp.iso'
807   $ qemu-system-i386 -serial stdio -bios u-boot.rom -hda disk.img -cdrom winxp.iso -smp 2 -m 512
808
809   # Boot a Windows XP OS installed on the virutal hard disk
810   $ qemu-system-i386 -serial stdio -bios u-boot.rom -hda disk.img -smp 2 -m 512
811
812This is also tested on Intel Crown Bay board with a PCIe graphics card, booting
813SeaBIOS then chain-loading a GRUB on a USB drive, then Linux kernel finally.
814
815
816Development Flow
817----------------
818These notes are for those who want to port U-Boot to a new x86 platform.
819
820Since x86 CPUs boot from SPI flash, a SPI flash emulator is a good investment.
821The Dediprog em100 can be used on Linux. The em100 tool is available here:
822
823   http://review.coreboot.org/p/em100.git
824
825On Minnowboard Max the following command line can be used:
826
827   sudo em100 -s -p LOW -d u-boot.rom -c W25Q64DW -r
828
829A suitable clip for connecting over the SPI flash chip is here:
830
831   http://www.dediprog.com/pd/programmer-accessories/EM-TC-8
832
833This allows you to override the SPI flash contents for development purposes.
834Typically you can write to the em100 in around 1200ms, considerably faster
835than programming the real flash device each time. The only important
836limitation of the em100 is that it only supports SPI bus speeds up to 20MHz.
837This means that images must be set to boot with that speed. This is an
838Intel-specific feature - e.g. tools/ifttool has an option to set the SPI
839speed in the SPI descriptor region.
840
841If your chip/board uses an Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP) it is fairly
842easy to fit it in. You can follow the Minnowboard Max implementation, for
843example. Hopefully you will just need to create new files similar to those
844in arch/x86/cpu/baytrail which provide Bay Trail support.
845
846If you are not using an FSP you have more freedom and more responsibility.
847The ivybridge support works this way, although it still uses a ROM for
848graphics and still has binary blobs containing Intel code. You should aim to
849support all important peripherals on your platform including video and storage.
850Use the device tree for configuration where possible.
851
852For the microcode you can create a suitable device tree file using the
853microcode tool:
854
855  ./tools/microcode-tool -d microcode.dat -m <model> create
856
857or if you only have header files and not the full Intel microcode.dat database:
858
859  ./tools/microcode-tool -H BAY_TRAIL_FSP_KIT/Microcode/M0130673322.h \
860	-H BAY_TRAIL_FSP_KIT/Microcode/M0130679901.h \
861	-m all create
862
863These are written to arch/x86/dts/microcode/ by default.
864
865Note that it is possible to just add the micrcode for your CPU if you know its
866model. U-Boot prints this information when it starts
867
868   CPU: x86_64, vendor Intel, device 30673h
869
870so here we can use the M0130673322 file.
871
872If you platform can display POST codes on two little 7-segment displays on
873the board, then you can use post_code() calls from C or assembler to monitor
874boot progress. This can be good for debugging.
875
876If not, you can try to get serial working as early as possible. The early
877debug serial port may be useful here. See setup_internal_uart() for an example.
878
879During the U-Boot porting, one of the important steps is to write correct PIRQ
880routing information in the board device tree. Without it, device drivers in the
881Linux kernel won't function correctly due to interrupt is not working. Please
882refer to U-Boot doc [15] for the device tree bindings of Intel interrupt router.
883Here we have more details on the intel,pirq-routing property below.
884
885	intel,pirq-routing = <
886		PCI_BDF(0, 2, 0) INTA PIRQA
887		...
888	>;
889
890As you see each entry has 3 cells. For the first one, we need describe all pci
891devices mounted on the board. For SoC devices, normally there is a chapter on
892the chipset datasheet which lists all the available PCI devices. For example on
893Bay Trail, this is chapter 4.3 (PCI configuration space). For the second one, we
894can get the interrupt pin either from datasheet or hardware via U-Boot shell.
895The reliable source is the hardware as sometimes chipset datasheet is not 100%
896up-to-date. Type 'pci header' plus the device's pci bus/device/function number
897from U-Boot shell below.
898
899  => pci header 0.1e.1
900    vendor ID =			0x8086
901    device ID =			0x0f08
902    ...
903    interrupt line =		0x09
904    interrupt pin =		0x04
905    ...
906
907It shows this PCI device is using INTD pin as it reports 4 in the interrupt pin
908register. Repeat this until you get interrupt pins for all the devices. The last
909cell is the PIRQ line which a particular interrupt pin is mapped to. On Intel
910chipset, the power-up default mapping is INTA/B/C/D maps to PIRQA/B/C/D. This
911can be changed by registers in LPC bridge. So far Intel FSP does not touch those
912registers so we can write down the PIRQ according to the default mapping rule.
913
914Once we get the PIRQ routing information in the device tree, the interrupt
915allocation and assignment will be done by U-Boot automatically. Now you can
916enable CONFIG_GENERATE_PIRQ_TABLE for testing Linux kernel using i8259 PIC and
917CONFIG_GENERATE_MP_TABLE for testing Linux kernel using local APIC and I/O APIC.
918
919This script might be useful. If you feed it the output of 'pci long' from
920U-Boot then it will generate a device tree fragment with the interrupt
921configuration for each device (note it needs gawk 4.0.0):
922
923   $ cat console_output |awk '/PCI/ {device=$4} /interrupt line/ {line=$4} \
924	/interrupt pin/ {pin = $4; if (pin != "0x00" && pin != "0xff") \
925	{patsplit(device, bdf, "[0-9a-f]+"); \
926	printf "PCI_BDF(%d, %d, %d) INT%c PIRQ%c\n", strtonum("0x" bdf[1]), \
927	strtonum("0x" bdf[2]), bdf[3], strtonum(pin) + 64, 64 + strtonum(pin)}}'
928
929Example output:
930   PCI_BDF(0, 2, 0) INTA PIRQA
931   PCI_BDF(0, 3, 0) INTA PIRQA
932...
933
934Porting Hints
935-------------
936
937Quark-specific considerations:
938
939To port U-Boot to other boards based on the Intel Quark SoC, a few things need
940to be taken care of. The first important part is the Memory Reference Code (MRC)
941parameters. Quark MRC supports memory-down configuration only. All these MRC
942parameters are supplied via the board device tree. To get started, first copy
943the MRC section of arch/x86/dts/galileo.dts to your board's device tree, then
944change these values by consulting board manuals or your hardware vendor.
945Available MRC parameter values are listed in include/dt-bindings/mrc/quark.h.
946The other tricky part is with PCIe. Quark SoC integrates two PCIe root ports,
947but by default they are held in reset after power on. In U-Boot, PCIe
948initialization is properly handled as per Quark's firmware writer guide.
949In your board support codes, you need provide two routines to aid PCIe
950initialization, which are board_assert_perst() and board_deassert_perst().
951The two routines need implement a board-specific mechanism to assert/deassert
952PCIe PERST# pin. Care must be taken that in those routines that any APIs that
953may trigger PCI enumeration process are strictly forbidden, as any access to
954PCIe root port's configuration registers will cause system hang while it is
955held in reset. For more details, check how they are implemented by the Intel
956Galileo board support codes in board/intel/galileo/galileo.c.
957
958coreboot:
959
960See scripts/coreboot.sed which can assist with porting coreboot code into
961U-Boot drivers. It will not resolve all build errors, but will perform common
962transformations. Remember to add attribution to coreboot for new files added
963to U-Boot. This should go at the top of each file and list the coreboot
964filename where the code originated.
965
966
967TODO List
968---------
969- Audio
970- Chrome OS verified boot
971- SMI and ACPI support, to provide platform info and facilities to Linux
972
973References
974----------
975[1] http://www.coreboot.org
976[2] http://www.qemu.org
977[3] http://www.coreboot.org/~stepan/pci8086,0166.rom
978[4] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/design-tools/evaluation-platforms/atom-e660-eg20t-development-kit.html
979[5] http://www.intel.com/fsp
980[6] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/intelligent-systems/privileged/e6xx-35-b1-cmc22211.html
981[7] http://www.ami.com/products/bios-uefi-tools-and-utilities/bios-uefi-utilities/
982[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode
983[9] http://simplefirmware.org
984[10] http://www.intel.com/design/archives/processors/pro/docs/242016.htm
985[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
986[12] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/chromeos_and_diy_vboot_0.pdf
987[13] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/elce-2014.pdf
988[14] http://www.seabios.org/SeaBIOS
989[15] doc/device-tree-bindings/misc/intel,irq-router.txt
990