Low level firmware thread?

Hello tech, let's have thread about boot firmware and stuff.

Why is Coreboot such a shit? All of the payloads are ass. I recently installed Coreboot with SeaBIOS, and I still use GRUB in the disk MBR, which loads Linux, which loads GNU. I fucking despise GRUB. Horrible bootloader. The shell is garbage and it's damn near impossible to theme it and make it look nice.

Now that I'm done bitching, allow me to offer an alternative solution. We could work on building a Coreboot payload that operates a bit like SGI ARCS. For those who don't know, SGI made kickass graphics workstations in the 90s that had a graphical firmware interface that could be loaded from the PROM chip. The way it worked basically is that this firmware called ARCS could display buttons to boot from the disk, boot to install media, repair the OS, drop to a shell, etc. I really enjoyed the functionality of the ARCS shell which was called SASH (stand alone shell). Not sure if SASH was loaded from ARCS or the MBR equivalent, but it was pretty great. SASH gives you access to ls, dd, chmod, echo, grep, mkdir, rmdir, touch, and much much more. And it's all in a single binary. It would be great to have this built into a Coreboot payload as a sort of BIOS for Linux/BSD users. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done, since we could just slap SASH and GUI components on top of an existing payload. The hardest part is making sure that SASH can boot the OS. This would completely eliminate that pig ugly hard to use, featureless, shitware that is GRUB.

Thoughts?

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Other urls found in this thread:

coreboot.org/Payloads#Linux-Kernel
gag.sourceforge.net/pics.html
rodsbooks.com/refind/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

And this is really something you need to do?

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Is it necessary? No. Should I be able to do it? Yes. I theme my window manager and gtk widgets and icons. I theme my login manager and my boot splash. Why not the bootloader as well? Why not have a consistent look from top to bottom instead of ugly garbage?

I was fine with your existence until you said that

Boot logo. Boot screen. Splash screen. What else?

White text on a black background is all the consistency you need.

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You seem to be stuck on the theme part. How about SASH as a payload? Or are weeaboo shitposters all tech illiterate? Did you even read the OP? I bet you haven't used the GRUB shell even once.

Protip: it's shit.

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It's shit. But you shouldn't be spending long periods of time in the bootloader anyway; its sole purpose is to load the kernel. Any kind of feature beyond that is useless.
Themes usually make the shell hardr to use.

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grub2 was a fucking disaster. I use syslinux instead on devices and VMs. I can install the MBR with good old cat instead of 20 megabees of garbage, it doesn't throw a fit when the drive name I'm installing it on will differ from the drive name at boot, and I can hardcode the boot drive in the MBR.

Bullshit. You and people like you are the reason why things are ugly and don't fucking work. In China they have the "chabuduo" or "good enough" culture. And guess what? 95% of Chinese goods and services are bottom of the barrel flimsy horse shit as a result. GRUB is not "good enough". It's ducktape and strings holding up the house and it's wholly unacceptable.


I mean syslinux is alright for what it is, but I'm not talking about a Linux-only solution. More of a BIOS replacement that can also be a bootloader for all Unix-like systems, ranging from Linux/BSD to even things like Open Indiana or MINIX. At the same time it should also be able to boot the Windows loader off the MBR or even boot GRUB if that's what the user really wants. It's all about choice, and not the false halfassed meaning of it that things like Libreboot and systemd have redefined to mean "a do it all our way or fuck off" kind of choice, hence my push for themes and a standard Unixy systemless shell to boot operating systems or other loader programs.

Why can't we have both the low level hardware init stuff and the bootloader inside the BIOS ROM? And no, before anyone points it out, UEFI is not the solution.

I said that the GRUB shell was useless, you moron. Not that it was "good enough".

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Read this post in its entirety if you're too smart and just need to shave off a few IQ points.

So why are you opposed to having something 100x better?


Quit huffing your own farts, Cletus. It's bad for your health.

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Something 100x better is just a straight binary without any UI or configuration files, recompiled from source and rewritten to the boot sector whenever its behaviour is to change. Not some bloated 20MB piece of GNUshit "bootloader" which also doubles as an operating system and font/image renderer.
In fact if your computer has EFI, you should just get rid of the bootloader altogether and have the kernel loaded directly by the EFI firmware. EFI is macroshit cancer but you might as well take advantage of some of its conveniences, because it's not going away.

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Build petitboot and add it as main payload faggot, what are you, a kike ? Jesus.

I don't have an EFI (well maybe, but it depends on how you'd define "extensible"). That being said, the thing I'm proposing doesn't need to be 20MB. It would come out being maybe 1-2MB, with the bulk of that being in the SASH and images. Might as well use the ROM space for something good since you get anywhere from 4-8MB free after running me_cleaner to remove AMT and TXE shit. It's better to have a shell as your bootloader than a shell in your bootloader.


What are you, a christcuck? Reed seej.

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Confirmed kike. Rot in hell tranny

I'm not a jew. Not everyone you mildly disagree with is a jew. Take your meds, faggot.

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if you have EFI you should throw your computer in the trash. there are plenty of non EFI computers available. EFI is just the last symptom of an architecture that has terminal cancer and is about to die

this. and there are just too many defective UEFI implementations that don't follow the spec.

grub's shell might be shit, but in it's defence it has modules for almost any imaginable system configuration and can even edit NVRAM contents when used as a playload directly. Most importantly it can unlock encrypted drives and preform signature checks without depending on EFI or a TPM. So far this is the only way i've found to have a 100% encrypted drive (including mbr...or would include MBR if the drive had one, or a partition table for that matter). It is pretty annoying how large the payload gets when you give it enough moduels to be useful though.

Well, fuck....
Didn't know.

You can make boot it itself:
coreboot.org/Payloads#Linux-Kernel
Also can use graphical loader, if you want:
gag.sourceforge.net/pics.html
Or use Tianocore with rodsbooks.com/refind/

So you are a tranny?

You're doing it wrong.


I don't want Linux as a payload, nor do I want an EFI.


Stop projecting your sick fetishes onto me and leave my thread.

It's like you want an evil maid attack.

If an attacker has physical access it's all ogre. This has always been and always will be true. If you're storing information on your disk that's so important that the CIA niggers would send someone to compromise your unattended systems, you have bigger problems. Mainly that it's cheaper for them to black bag you and throw you in a van and beat you until you give them the password. Encrypting the home folder is enough to prevent a thieving Daequan from viewing your 1TB of hentai, and a BIOS password would prevent him from reselling the hardware. That being said, why the fuck don't you have a Kensington lock sewn into your backpack that you keep eyes on at all times?

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*puts transmitter in your keyboard on your stupid machine with the latest hardware based security attestation bullshit*

BLOAT

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?


WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?
WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?


WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?
WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?

WHY IS TERRY A. DAVIS'S DEATH BEING CENSORED?