linuxboot / linuxboot/book

document booting with EFI vs DT only

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Dominant language
JavaScript
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Forks
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Description

Roughly, regardless of EFI or DT, register conventions are used to pass information to the OS.

The respective register would hold a memory address, and that would point to either

  • an FDT, so the OS can check for the d00dfeed magic
  • an EFI System Table, so the OS can check for the 0x5453595320494249 (TSYS IBI) signature

From there, the OS traverses to find more information.

In the case of (U)EFI, it will find references (pointers) to methods in memory to call into.
Note that UEFI technically does not have to be coupled with ACPI, however, de facto it mostly is.
Some firmware implementations for SoC platforms offer EFI + ACPI + DT.

With Device Tree, the OS will read static information from specific nodes to identify the platform, take the cmdline and memory to use, and learn about the buses and peripherals. The design of DTs may differ between SoCs, in part because SoCs also differ in their design.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Review the existing Markdown chapters in the LinuxBoot book and locate the section covering platform boot information. Use the issue text and its EFI specification links to document the EFI System Table and Device Tree paths, including their signatures, pointers, and platform information; the documentation is done when the EFI-versus-DT distinction is clearly explained.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
documentation, operating-systems
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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