Leah Rowe
5b353a2290
Of note: upstream has made several improvements to memory management, and several fixes to file systems. User-friendly change to LUKS: if the passphrase input failed, the user is prompted again for the correct passphrase, instead of GRUB just failing. Similar to cryptsetup luksOpen behaviour under Linux. This pulls in the following changes from upstream (gnu.org): * b53ec06a1 util/grub-mkrescue: Check existence of option arguments * ab9fe8030 loader/efi/fdt: Add fdtdump command to access device tree * 0cfec355d osdep/devmapper/getroot: Unmark 2 strings for translation * f171122f0 loader/emu/linux: Fix determination of program name * 828717833 disk/cryptodisk: Fix translatable message * 9a2134a70 tests: Add test for ZFS zstd * f96df6fe9 fs/zfs/zfs: Add support for zstd compression * 55d35d628 kern/efi/mm: Detect calls to grub_efi_drop_alloc() with wrong page counts * 61f1d0a61 kern/efi/mm: Change grub_efi_allocate_pages_real() to call semantically correct free function * dc0a3a27d kern/efi/mm: Change grub_efi_mm_add_regions() to keep track of map allocation size * b990df0be tests/util/grub-fs-tester: Fix EROFS label tests in grub-fs-tester * d41c64811 tests: Switch to requiring exfatprogs from exfat-utils * c1ee4da6a tests/util/grub-shell-luks-tester: Fix detached header test getting wrong header path * c22e052fe tests/util/grub-shell: Add flexibility in QEMU firmware handling * d2fc9dfcd tests/util/grub-shell: Use pflash instead of -bios to load UEFI firmware * 88a7e64c2 tests/util/grub-shell: Print gdbinfo if on EFI platform * b8d29f114 configure: Add Debian/Ubuntu DejaVu font path * 13b315c0a term/ns8250-spcr: Add one more 16550 debug type * 8abec8e15 loader/i386/multiboot_mbi: Fix handling of errors in broken aout-kludge * d35ff2251 net/drivers/ieee1275/ofnet: Remove 200 ms timeout in get_card_packet() to reduce input latency * 86df79275 commands/efi/tpm: Re-enable measurements on confidential computing platforms * 0b4d01794 util/grub-mkpasswd-pbkdf2: Simplify the main function implementation * fa36f6376 kern/ieee1275/init: Add IEEE 1275 Radix support for KVM on Power * c464f1ec3 fs/zfs/zfs: Mark vdev_zaps_v2 and head_errlog as supported * 2ffc14ba9 types: Add missing casts in compile-time byteswaps * c6ac49120 font: Add Fedora-specific font paths * 5e8989e4e fs/bfs: Fix improper grub_free() on non-existing files * c806e4dc8 io/gzio: Properly init a table * 243682baa io/gzio: Abort early when get_byte() reads nothing * bb65d81fe cli_lock: Add build option to block command line interface * 56e58828c fs/erofs: Add tests for EROFS in grub-fs-tester * 9d603061a fs/erofs: Add support for the EROFS * 1ba39de62 safemath: Add ALIGN_UP_OVF() which checks for an overflow * d291449ba docs: Fix spelling mistakes * 6cc2e4481 util/grub.d/00_header.in: Quote background image pathname in output * f456add5f disk/lvm: GRUB fails to detect LVM volumes due to an incorrect computation of mda_end * 386b59ddb disk/cryptodisk: Allow user to retry failed passphrase * 99b4c0c38 disk/mdraid1x_linux: Prevent infinite recursion * b272ed230 efi: Fix stack protector issues * 6744840b1 build: Track explicit module dependencies in Makefile.core.def Signed-off-by: Leah Rowe <leah@libreboot.org>
Libreboot
Find libreboot documentation at https://libreboot.org/
The libreboot project provides
libre boot
firmware that initializes the hardware (e.g. memory controller, CPU,
peripherals) on specific Intel/AMD x86 and ARM targets, which
then starts a bootloader for your operating system. Linux/BSD are
well-supported. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. Help is available
via #libreboot IRC
on Libera IRC.
Why use Libreboot?
Why should you use libreboot?
Libreboot gives you freedoms that you otherwise can't get with most other boot firmware. It's extremely powerful and configurable for many use cases.
You have rights. The right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and the right to read. In this context, Libreboot gives you these rights. Your freedom matters. Right to repair matters. Many people use proprietary (non-libre) boot firmware, even if they use a libre OS. Proprietary firmware often contains backdoors (more info on the FAQ), and it and can be buggy. The libreboot project was founded in December 2013, with the express purpose of making coreboot firmware accessible for non-technical users.
The libreboot project uses coreboot for hardware
initialisation.
Coreboot is notoriously difficult to install for most non-technical users; it
handles only basic initialization and jumps to a separate
payload program (e.g.
GRUB,
Tianocore), which must also be configured.
The libreboot software solves this problem; it is a coreboot distribution with
an automated build system (named lbmk) that builds complete ROM images, for
more robust installation. Documentation is provided.
How does Libreboot differ from coreboot?
In the same way that Debian is a GNU+Linux distribution, libreboot is
a coreboot distribution. If you want to build a ROM image from scratch, you
otherwise have to perform expert-level configuration of coreboot, GRUB and
whatever other software you need, to prepare the ROM image. With libreboot,
you can literally download from Git or a source archive, and run make, and it
will build entire ROM images. An automated build system, named lbmk
(Libreboot MaKe), builds these ROM images automatically, without any user input
or intervention required. Configuration has already been performed in advance.
If you were to build regular coreboot, without using libreboot's automated build system, it would require a lot more intervention and decent technical knowledge to produce a working configuration.
Regular binary releases of libreboot provide these
ROM images pre-compiled, and you can simply install them, with no special
knowledge or skill except the ability to follow installation instructions
and run commands BSD/Linux.
Project goals
- Support as much hardware as possible! Libreboot aims to eventually have maintainers for every board supported by coreboot, at every point in time.
- Make coreboot easy to use. Coreboot is notoriously difficult to install, due to an overall lack of user-focused documentation and support. Most people will simply give up before attempting to install coreboot. Libreboot's automated build system and user-friendly installation instructions solves this problem.
Libreboot attempts to bridge this divide by providing a build system automating much of the coreboot image creation and customization. Secondly, the project produces documentation aimed at non-technical users. Thirdly, the project attempts to provide excellent user support via IRC.
Libreboot already comes with a payload (GRUB), flashprog and other needed parts. Everything is fully integrated, in a way where most of the complicated steps that are otherwise required, are instead done for the user in advance.
You can download ROM images for your libreboot system and install them without having to build anything from source. If, however, you are interested in building your own image, the build system makes it relatively easy to do so.
Not a coreboot fork!
Libreboot is not a fork of coreboot. Every so often, the project re-bases on the latest version of coreboot, with the number of custom patches in use minimized. Tested, stable (static) releases are then provided in Libreboot, based on specific coreboot revisions.
How to help
You can check bugs listed on the bug tracker.
If you spot a bug and have a fix, the website has instructions for how to send patches, and you can also report it. Also, this entire website is written in Markdown and hosted in a separate repository where you can send patches.
Any and all development discussion and user support are all done on the IRC channel. More information is on https://libreboot.org/contact.html.
LICENSE FOR THIS README
It's just a README file. This README file is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero license, version 1.0 of the license, which you can read here:
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.txt