OFW as a Coreboot Payload

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This page tells how to build Open Firmware as a Coreboot payload and run it under QEMU. You can also run Open Firmware under QEMU without Coreboot:

Software Requirements

  • qemu-0.9.1
  • Open Firmware rev. >= 1051
  • coreboot >= v2
  • GCC and GNU make - OFW builds with most versions; I'm not sure which versions Coreboot needs

Building Open Firmware

Download the Open Firmware source: 

 svn co svn://openfirmware.info/openfirmware

Configure OFW for Coreboot: 

 cd openfirmware/cpu/x86/pc/biosload
 cp config-coreboot.fth config.fth

Build OFW: 

 cd build
 make

After make is finished (it shouldn't take long) there should be a file "ofwlb.elf" in the same directory. Copy this to your coreboot-v[x] directory.

Building coreboot

Follow the instructions in the coreboot documentation, using ofwlb.elf as your payload file.

Getting QEMU

Get QEMU >= 0.9.1 from http://bellard.org/qemu/download.html

Version 0.9.1 should "just work". It supports reasonably large ROM images, determining the emulated ROM size from the size of the image file. There was a "qemu_biossize.patch" for qemu-0.9.0, but the site that hosted that patch is defunct.

Run Your ROM Image

   qemu  -L coreboot-v3/build -hda path/to/disk.img -serial `tty` -nographic

Ideas for Improvement

These instructions build a rather plain OFW configuration that lacks drivers for several of QEMU's specific I/O devices (Ethernet, video, sound). Suitable drivers are in the OFW tree, and are included in the QEMU build described in Building OFW for QEMU. It would be nice to add those drivers to the configuration described herein. If the Cirrus video driver were added, qemu could be used in graphic mode.


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