Hi

Is is possible to use a Linux bootloader in place of a BIOS?


What I'm thinking is, a linux bootloader on a bios chip designed to work in place of a BIOS, but can read FAT (and possibly NTFS if possible) partitions so no need for reading a boot partition first.


Would this be possible? I've heard of linuxbios but I think that's just a standard BIOS. What I'm looking for as I said is something that doesn't need a boot partition on a hard disk.


This isn't really anything I plan on doing but I would like to know if it's possible.

Well, for one BIOS is very different from bootloader. What you may want is something like openbios or linuxbios/coreboot, but know that they don't support many motherboard, and if your motherboard is not listed, do not try it as it will likely brick your system ... i.e. make it about as useful as a brick.

If this is for an embedded system you should look at ecos/redboot http://ecos.sourceware.org/

As long as you save the original bios chip you should be able to revert your system to a working state if anything goes wrong. However, there's always the risk of an electrical accident, since you will have to hot swap the chip while the box is on. If the mother board or the chip gets fried then you are screwed. So make sure you can afford it before trying.

Not really...Its like a bios, but different. Has similar functions, structure, to a standard bios, but it doesn't need to support all of the junk that legacy systems, but not current ones, need.

What you seem to be describing is something like the 'instant on' facilities offered by some - Asus? - systems. These allow you to get into a simple, rom-based, linux-based, system quite quickly and perform simple functions from there.

That's exactly it! Only I'm looking for some sort of firmware that doesn't need to read from a boot partition but only needs to read the FAT file system to load an OS from hard disk so it's quicker.


I have heard of this thing called an EFI in Intel macs, and I think that can do exactly that and also HFS+ partitions so I am looking for something similar to that feature for a PC. Just to point out though, I obviously don't need something can read from HFS+ partitions though just FAT and FAT32 at least.

EFI, as rms would say, is a lie - a pretending-to-be-free-BIOS.

You can do as already suggested and read about openbios and linuxbios. linuxbios is one of the 'payloads' which openbios can start; it's a small system which can be flashed to RAM along with openbios. Openbios provides all the basic hardware support (which is complicated by different support chips, blah blah blah) so the payload can do its job without worrying about the details of the hardware control.

Otherwise the only other way I can think of which replaces the BIOS is to write your own bootloader - that would be a mistake because it would have to incorporate most hardware-specific BIOS routines anyway. Of course if you only plan to ever deploy the software on one specific incarnation of a machine, then this is a sensible path.

Yeah.

I will need something that can do the BIOS specific tasks to run the hardware, that's obvious so the odds are if there is something that can replace a legacy BIOS then it would come capable of those tasks.


And about this EFI thing, are you saying what intel say is wrong and it can't really load an OS straight from a FAT partition? That's false advertising! I've also read it can now boot from Wifi is that a lie too?

Anyway I don't want EFI so it's features wether true or not are academic.


Anyway I think I'll check out linuxbios and openboot and see what comes up.