Board:tyan/s2891

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Before you begin

Do yourself a favor, and get a BiosSavior before you begin. There are different models, make sure you order the one you need. It depends on the size and type of the ROM chip on your board. Our S2891 board has an 8Mbit PLCC chip. This is the list of BiosSavior vendors:

 http://www.ioss.com.tw/web/English/WheretoBuy.html

Unfortunately the largest BiosSavior of the PMC type is only 512Kbyte; the proprietary bios is 1024Kbyte large. You can build a LinuxBIOS image in 512Kbyte, so this should not be a problem; you may want to buy a couple of extra 1Mbyte PLCC chips to save a copy of the original BIOS, and put it somewhere safe.

While LinuxBIOS replaces the functions of the proprietary bios, it does NOT replace the VGA bios. If you want VGA on your linuxBIOS'd machine (not strictly necessary for servers), you will need to extract the VGA bios and concatenate it with the LinuxBIOS image, before burning it to your ROM. See below for details.

This wiki page is maintained by Ward Vandewege (ward at gnu dot org).

Hardware

The S2891 comes with a 8Mbit BIOS chip (SST 49LF080A). This is sufficient to have a fully functional LinuxBIOS with FILO payload, as described below.

Payload

LinuxBIOS requires a Payload to boot an operating system.

If you want to boot from the network, you will need to use Etherboot.

If you want to boot from an IDE drive, USB stick or CDROM, you can use FILO.

Booting from SATA is problematic; the CK804 chipset on this board does not support a legacy IDE mode, so FILO and Etherboot can not boot directly from SATA (seehttp://linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2006-May/014654.html). Putting a tiny Linux kernel in the rom image solves this problem though.

Building the payload

TODO: this is work-in-progress. Come back in a bit...

In order to boot from a SATA disk, we use ... a kernel in the rom image.

In order to get serial output from Grub, you will also need to add something like this to your menu.list:

 # serial port 0
 serial --unit=0 --speed=115200
 terminal --timeout=15 serial console

Building LinuxBIOS

Download LinuxBIOS (http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Download_LinuxBIOS).

If you want VGA support, a few changes are required in the linuxbios source tree. Edit this file:

 src/mainboard/tyan/s2891/Options.lb

You'll need to enable the following two lines:

 #VGA Console
 default CONFIG_CONSOLE_VGA=1
 default CONFIG_PCI_ROM_RUN=1

Whether you want VGA or not, build a tyan/s2891 tree.

 cd targets
 ./buildtarget tyan/s2891

Modify tyan/s2891/Config.lb; change payload setting to point to your payload elf file

If you don't need VGA, you will need to modify tyan/s2891/Config.lb. Comment out the line:

 option ROM_SIZE = 1024*1024-48*1024

If you do need VGA, modify the ROM_SIZE line to the following, because our VGA bios is only 36KB, not 48K:

 option ROM_SIZE = 1024*1024-36*1024

NOTE: if you are planning to put the image in the built-in BiosSavior chip (which is only 512Kbyte), use this ROM_SIZE:

 option ROM_SIZE = 512*1024-36*1024

Build the image:

 cd tyan/s2891/s2891
 make

If you see compilation errors, make sure you have GCC's stack protector disabled. See the stack protector page to deal with that.

VGA bios

Skip this section if you don't need VGA support in your LinuxBIOS.

The s2891 VGA bios is 36K long. The last 4KB are not available in RAM after boot (with the proprietary BIOS), however, so we can NOT use this method to extract the VGA BIOS:

 While booted with your proprietary BIOS, you can see where your vga bios starts 
 and how much space it takes by issuing
   cat /proc/iomem | grep "Video ROM"
 Then get a copy of your vga bios.
   dd if=/dev/mem of=vgabios.bin bs=1k count=32 skip=768
 Our vga bios is 32K. Verify that the image is correct - it should start with 55 AA, 
 and contain strings that indicate it's your VGA bios. You should be able to clearly 
 make out 'ATI RAGE' etc.

So this does not work - the last 4K is missing. Thankfully, Anton Borisov has some tools that can extract the VGA BIOS - and other option ROMs, in fact - from the BIOS images that Tyan offers on its website.

You can download the tool for Phoenix here:

 http://www.kaos.ru/biosgfx/download/PhoenixDeco_0.33.src.tar.gz

Then download the latest proprietary BIOS for the s2891 from the TYAN website:

 http://www.tyan.com/support_download_bios.aspx?model=S.S2891

Once you have the image, you can display its contents like this:

 ./phnxdeco 2891202T.wph -ls

That should show output like:

 -=PhoenixDeco, version 0.33 (Linux)=-

 Filelength      : 100756 (1050454 bytes)
 Filename        : ../2891202T.wph
 PhoenixBIOS hook found at       : F6FB0
 System Information at           : F6FFE
 BootBlock       : 7000 bytes
 BankSize        : 1024 KB
 Version         : DEVEL042
 Start           : F8BB5
 Offset          : F0000
 BCP Modules     : 80
 BCPFCP          : FCA73
 FCP 1st module  : 9DD5 (F9DD5)
 Released        : 30 November 2006 at 11:19:23
 /* Copyrighted Information */
         NAPI
 /* ----------------------- */
 
 ================================== MODULE MAP =================================
 Class Code
 . Instance
 . .
 C I    LEVEL      START       END     LENGTH  RATIO   LINK TO   FILEOFFSET
 ----   -----    ---------  ---------  ------  -----  ---------  ----------
 G  0    NONE    FFFF 8BB5  FFFF 8FFF    430    100%  FFFF 8048    F8BB5h
 D  0   LZINT    FFFF 8048  FFFF 8BB4    B52     70%  FFFF 7FDB    F8048h
 A  1   LZINT    FFFF 7FDB  FFFF 8047     52     70%  FFFF 7FBC    F7FDBh
 *  0    NONE    FFFF 7FBC  FFFF 7FDA      4    100%  FFFF 7BA3    F7FBCh
 B  0   LZINT    FFFF 7BA3  FFFF 7FBB    3FE      3%  FFFF 0E05    F7BA3h
 X  0    NONE    FFFF 0E05  FFFF 7BA1   6D82    100%  FFFE C525    F0E05h
 S  0   LZINT    FFFE C525  FFFF 0E04   48C5     46%  FFFE 8601    EC525h
 E  0   LZINT    FFFE 8601  FFFE C524   3F09     41%  FFFE 65D5    E8601h
 C  0    NONE    FFFE 65D5  FFFE 85FF   2010    100%  FFFE 0005    E65D5h
 X  1    NONE    FFFE 0005  FFFE 644F   6430    100%  FFFD A653    E0005h
 T  0   LZINT    FFFD A653  FFFE 0004   5997     42%  FFFD 365C    DA653h
 R  0   LZINT    FFFD 365C  FFFD A652   6FDC     58%  FFFC DAC1    D365Ch
 R  1   LZINT    FFFC DAC1  FFFD 365B   5B80     63%  FFFB 9ED0    CDAC1h
 R  2   LZINT    FFFB 9ED0  FFFC DAC0  13BD6     61%  FFFA 73D5    B9ED0h
 R  3   LZINT    FFFA 73D5  FFFB 9ECF  12AE0     98%  FFF9 48E0    A73D5h
 R  4   LZINT    FFF9 48E0  FFFA 73D4  12ADA     98%  FFF8 B14D    948E0h
 R  5   LZINT    FFF8 B14D  FFF9 48DF   9778     59%  FFF8 9830    8B14Dh
 L  0   LZINT    FFF8 9830  FFF8 B14C   1902      0%  FFF8 825D    89830h
 M  0   LZINT    FFF8 825D  FFF8 982F   15B8     64%  FFF8 5C92    8825Dh
 Q  0   LZINT    FFF8 5C92  FFF8 825C   25B0     41%  FFF7 F3D7    85C92h
 H  0    NONE    FFF7 F3D7  FFF8 5C91   68A0    100%  FFF7 DDF1    7F3D7h
 A  0   LZINT    FFF7 DDF1  FFF7 F3D6   15CB     38%  FFF7 766B    7DDF1h
 B  1   LZINT    FFF7 766B  FFF7 8D91   170C     25%  FFF6 F699    7766Bh
 B  2   LZINT    FFF6 F699  FFF7 766A   7FB7     73%  FFF6 5694    6F699h
 B  3   LZINT    FFF6 5694  FFF6 F698   9FEA     67%  FFF5 A1F3    65694h
 B  4   LZINT    FFF5 A1F3  FFF6 5693   B486     71%  FFF5 917A    5A1F3h
 B  5   LZINT    FFF5 917A  FFF5 A1F2   105E     68%  FFF5 8477    5917Ah
 B  6   LZINT    FFF5 8477  FFF5 9179    CE8     67%  0000 0000    58477h
 Total Sections: 28

Now extract all these parts:

 ./phnxdeco 2891202T.wph -xs

That will create a number of new files:

 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  14643 2007-06-20 15:16 ACPI0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward    116 2007-06-20 15:16 ACPI1.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  28672 2007-06-20 15:16 bb.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  33913 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  22987 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD1.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  44635 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD2.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  60875 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD3.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  64891 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD4.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   6123 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD5.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   4907 2007-06-20 15:16 BIOSCOD6.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   1099 2007-06-20 15:16 DECOMPC0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   4128 2007-06-20 15:16 DISPLAY0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward 787512 2007-06-20 15:16 LOGO0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   8576 2007-06-20 15:16 MISER0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  49152 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  36864 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM1.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward 131072 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM2.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  77824 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM3.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  77824 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM4.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  65536 2007-06-20 15:16 OPROM5.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  28061 2007-06-20 15:16 ROMEXEC0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  25675 2007-06-20 15:16 ROMEXEC1.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   1234 2007-06-20 15:16 rom.scr
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  39110 2007-06-20 15:16 SETUP0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  40396 2007-06-20 15:16 STRINGS0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward      4 2007-06-20 15:16 TCPA_*0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  26784 2007-06-20 15:16 TCPA_H0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  23136 2007-06-20 15:16 TCPA_Q0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward  53472 2007-06-20 15:16 TEMPLAT0.rom
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ward ward   8208 2007-06-20 15:16 UPDATE0.rom

After a bit of fun with 'strings', we can deduce that the OPROM1.rom file contains our VGA bios.

So, now that we have the proper VGA bios image (36K long), we need to concatenate the VGA bios with the linuxbios image

 cat OPROM1.rom linuxbios.rom > final_linuxbios.rom

Burning the bios

Make sure your Biossavior is set to the 'RD1' position (not to 'ORG'!), so that you can always revert to the original bios.

On the target machine:

  cd LinuxBIOSv2/util/flashrom
  ./flashrom -v -w path/to/your/linuxbios.rom

If you want VGA support, make sure you burn the final_linuxbios.rom image!

Booting LinuxBIOS

You now need to 'halt' the machine. A soft reset won't work the first time you boot from the proprietary BIOS into LinuxBIOS.

Since we set up serial output in the LinuxBIOS configuration files above, you will want to hook up a serial console (or a copy of minicom or the like) to see what the box is doing while starting up. Keep your eyes on the screen after hitting the power button - LinuxBIOS will be up and running way before you expect it!

If you have problems, don't despair. Power down the box, switch the biossavior to 'ORG' and boot in the proprietary BIOS. Just don't forget to switch the biossavior back to the 'RD1' position before flashing the BIOS!

See what went wrong, and subscribe and post to the friendly and helpful mailing list if you can't figure it out by yourself.