[coreboot] Code flow from reset vector

Peter Stuge peter at stuge.se
Wed Mar 26 14:05:19 CET 2008


On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 04:27:11AM -0700, Viswesh S wrote:
> I modified the makefile and copied the coreboot before the
> stripping to vis_1strip and then did an objdump.

coreboot.rom is not an ELF file so elfutils can't really do much good
with it, as you have noticed.


> [viswesh at arka image]$ objdump -D --start-address=0xfffffff0 --stop-address=0xffffffff vis_1strip
> vis_1strip:     file format elf32-i386
> Disassembly of section .ram:
> Disassembly of section .rom:
> Disassembly of section .reset:
> fffffff0 <reset_vector>:
> fff0:   e9 51 53 ff ff          jmp    ffff5346 <_start+0x2>

Remember I wrote that it is common to have a far jump very early?


> So here I can actually see the flash location and the opcodes in
> that location.
> 
> But when I do the same, as you mentioned,  when I try to dump the
> last 0x20 bytes in coreboot.rom file, I should actually see similar
> instructions and basically there should be a jump in the last 16 bytes.

If you use an x86 disassembler on the last 16 bytes of coreboot.rom
you will get the above instruction. You can use objdump but it needs
some help. First make a new file starting from the address you are
interested in:

stuge at n410c ~/co/v2/targets/gigabyte/m57sli/m57sli $ dd if=coreboot.rom of=out bs=$[524288-16] skip=1
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
16 bytes (16 B) copied, 0.000135259 s, 118 kB/s


Then disassemble:

stuge at n410c ~/co/v2/targets/gigabyte/m57sli/m57sli $ objdump -b binary -m i386 -D out

out:     file format binary

Disassembly of section .data:

0000000000000000 <.data>:
   0:   e9 11 f0 ff ff          jmp    0xfffff016
   5:   00 00                   add    %al,(%eax)
   7:   00 e9                   add    %ch,%cl
   9:   5f                      pop    %edi
   a:   f0 ff                   lock (bad) 
   c:   ff 00                   incl   (%eax)
        ...
stuge at n410c ~/co/v2/targets/gigabyte/m57sli/m57sli $ 

The addresses say 0 but if you prefer just use the --start-address
option.


> [viswesh at arka image]$ objdump -D coreboot.rom | grep -ni reset_vector
> [viswesh at arka image]$ objdump -D coreboot.rom | grep -ni _start

Will not work since coreboot.rom is not in a file format that objdump
can parse correctly.


> [viswesh at arka image]$ objdump -D coreboot.rom | tail
>   13cf96:       00 00                   add    %al,(%eax)
>   13cf98:       00 00                   add    %al,(%eax)
>   13cf9a:       00 00                   add    %al,(%eax)
>   13cf9c:       d1 e5                   shl    %ebp
>   13cf9e:       10 00                   adc    %al,(%eax)
>   13cfa0:       08 00                   or     %al,(%eax)
>   13cfa2:       00 00                   add    %al,(%eax)
>   13cfa4:       27                      daa
>   13cfa5:       e7 10                   out    %eax,$0x10
>         ...
> [viswesh at arka image]$
> 
> So here also we dont see any jump to a specific location.

Again, objdump treats coreboot.rom as an ELF file, which it is not,
and so you get garbage output.


> So basically where should be the code which should be flashed into
> the location 0xfffffff0.

It is 16 bytes from the end of coreboot.rom.



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