[GSoC] UEFI framebuffer task

[Philipp Kerling]

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for looking through my findings.

Am Freitag, den 17.03.2017, 11:01 +0100 schrieb Sebastian Sumpf:
> Loading Genode with GRUB2 is sufficient. The main goal is, as you
> said,
> to not rely on outdated BIOS features. There is already a work in
> progress on the NOVA hypervisor
> (https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/issues/2242), which now
> supports
> legacy boot (mutliboot) and UEFI boot (multiboot2).
Yes, I had taken a look at that. I've investigated a bit, but apart
from VBE and getting rid of the BDA for communicating the serial port
address there doesn't seem to be that much left driver-wise to do at
first glance since Genode didn't use many of the AT BIOS features in
the first place. RTC driver using EFI runtime services could be added,
though.

> Sounds very good. VBE is not necessary as Genode already offers a
> VESA
> driver.
Yep, that was just to illustrate that it's not specifically an UEFI
issue.

> I have to admit that this challenge is meant for students with little
> systems programming knowledge an, so feel free to look into more
> challenging topics here (http://genode.org/about/challenges). Also,
> these are just suggestions and you are welcome to propose topics. We
> also have topics not on the challenges list, if you let us know your
> interests (like kernel hacking, device drivers, porting ...), we may
> be
> able to suggest something more fitting for you.
I'd like to try my hand at device drivers, which was why I looked into
the UEFI thing in the first place. Do you have any suggestions there
that are not on the list? Isochronous USB is an option, but it looks
like it is more about hooking up/passing through the Linux driver code
correctly than the actual USB driver stuff.

Regards,
Philipp