Re: grub-dumpbios

[Bean]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Robert Millan <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 03:57:17AM +0800, Bean wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Perhaps we could incorporate them in grub-update/grub-install, I guess
>> there should be no harm adding two files in /boot/grub.
>
> Please don't.  This is really corner case;  I at least wouldn't want GRUB
> to install non-free blobs in /boot/grub automagically.
>
> (Those blobs were already in the hardware, so GRUB is not responsible for
> them, but still...)
>
> Is this use case documented somewhere (e.g. in the wiki)?  Then users who
> need it can learn about the procedure from the same place.  Also ...
>

Hi,

I've documented the usage of grub-dumpbios in wiki page:

http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook

The commands can be placed there as well. I personally doesn't mind,
but perhaps it would be easier for casual user to use a command
instead of typing the dd's directly.

> On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 10:28:52PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
>> As a side note: On many machines dumping the VGA option rom like that
>> does not produce good option rom images. Many option roms are
>> self-modifying and the above method only dumps the modified variants of
>> the ROMs that are normally not good for "POSTing" a graphics card
>> anymore. They're still good for other purposes though I guess.
>
> ... as Stefan points out (thanks Stefan) this may not be so
> straightforwarded.  I don't think this kind of tweaking is suitable
> for a setup that "Joe user" will get by default.
>
> Btw, if the video rom can be obtained directly from memory, why doesn't
> GRUB read it in runtime instead?

Actually, the modified rom is what we need, as it contains information
such as DDC table which is detected on POST, the original rom is not
very useful in this respect.

A better approach would be to fetch the rom from pci, then emulate the
POST process in grub2. But this need to port code from x86emu.

>
> --
> Robert Millan
>
>  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
>  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
>  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."
>
>
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>



-- 
Bean