[LinuxBIOS] Specifications

[Brendan Trotter]

Hi,

On 6/12/07, Stefan Reinauer <stepan at coresystems.de> wrote:
> * Brendan Trotter <btrotter at gmail.com> [070612 12:43]:
> > > check LinuxBIOSv2/util/lbtdump
> >
> >  I've found "src/include/boot/linuxbios_tables.h" and have also looked
> >  at the source for LinuxBIOSv2/util/lbtdump.
> >
> >  However, I fail to see how any source code can be considered a viable
> >  alternative to documentation for something that is (hopefully) a
> >  non-proprietory common standard. Reverse engineering (including
> >  relying on assumptions derived from the source code of any specific
> >  implementation) is what people do when they have no documentation and
> >  are willing to stumble around in the dark hoping to implement
> >  something that works until the wind changes.
>
> Yes, no doubt. You are perfectly right, and we are looking forward to
> your patches to fix this problem. Of course you do not have to reverse
> engineer, but just read the code, as we are non-proprietary. And of
> course we are always here to be asked.

Hehe - by the time you've finished answering all my questions you'd
wish you'd written the documentation beforehand... ;-)

Is "uint32_t" always little-endian or is it architecture specific
(reverse engineering ruled out "always big-endian"), and would the
"lb_header.signature" field always have an ASCII 'L' at the lowest
address (or is that architecture specific too)?

The source file "util/lbtdump/lbtdump.c" does this:

		if (head->header_bytes != sizeof(*head)) {
			fprintf(stderr, "Header bytes of %d are incorrect\n",
				head->header_bytes);
			continue;
		}