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Introduction
Sometimes we should stop and look at the tools without which it would be difficult to even imagine everyday work. Some of them are so essential, that to avoid them means to develop a wheel once again in the history. Such a tool in the world of firmware – along with keyboard, fridge and linux – is a dwarf that became synonymous with the word bootloader. And by dwarf I mean of course GRUB.
Last December, we’ve met with our friend, Daniel Kiper, GRUB upstream maintainer and TrenchBoot technical leader inside Oracle. This meeting resulted in organization of GRUB minisummit 2019, because we wanted to understand a vision of both, GRUB/GRUB2 community and commercial perspective. All the event was fruitful and grounded some common path that will be slightly summarized below. This year we cannot miss this opportunity to meet again and face the new challenges of GRUB/GRUB2. Dear reader, feel invited to look with us at GRUB2 through a magnifying glass.
How we are proceeding this year
The fourth-and-last live goes on the 24th of November here – you can follow us on twitter, to stay updated.
- GRUB2 licence issues by Piotr Król
- Support for RISC-V in GRUB2 by Michał Żygowski and Piotr Król.
Previous meetings of GRUB mini-summit 2020
We were all really keen to meet and talk through presented issues. If you were unable to participate, nothing to worry about! check the videos below.
Day 1
The opening with Piotr Król, Michał Żygowski and our friend Daniel Kiper from Oracle
- Introduction to GRUB2 mini-summit by Piotr Król, the founder of 3mdeb
- Network boot in GRUB2 by Michał Żygowski from 3mdeb
- GRUB2 project status by Daniel Kiper
Day 2
Great live with a special guest: Daniel Axtens from IBM
- Secure boot without UEFI: booting VMs on Power(PC) by Daniel Axtens
- AMD TrenchBoot support in GRUB2 by Piotr Król
Day 3
This time we’ve had a pleasure to host Patrick Rudolph from 9elements and Daniel Kiper from Oracle.
- XHCI support in GRUB2 by Patrick Rudolph
- The Firmware and Bootloader log specification by Daniel Kiper
Big kudos for our special guests. Thank you Daniel Kiper, Daniel Axtens and Patrick Rudolph for sharing your experience and knowledge with us during the meetings with GRUB.
Where to link the event?
You will find us on our YouTube 3mdeb channel. All you need to do is joining our live here in an appropriate time presented above. We are starting tomorrow at 04:00 PM (UTC+1:00).
Whom will you meet?
Prelections will be held by the team of experts and GRUB contributors from 3mdeb, Oracle, IBM and 9elements who are happy to answer intriguing questions and share their passion without creating any marketing pitch.
The GRUB bootloader is the most common bootloader in the Linux based operating systems. So, its further development requires close cooperation between upstream maintainers, OS distributions and other users. The GRUB mini-summit is a very good place to tighten it. We are going to discuss there current and future GRUB developments but also challenges facing the project. The topics not only cover technical aspects but also organizational and legal issues. If you are interested in the bootloaders and firmware and you want to hear what is happening in the GRUB world please join us. And we are also interested in hearing what you expect from the project…
– Daniel Kiper, GRUB maintainer, TrenchBoot technical leader at Oracle
There are no enough evets discussing interfaces between firmware, bootloaders, and operating systems, especially in the light of recent vulnerabilities and evolution of firmware interfaces. 3mdeb co-organizing this event with Daniel Kiper (GRUB maintainer), we would like to raise awareness about the value produced in the effect of community and business collaboration. We also would like to build a platform to discuss the interface between firmware and bootloader, bootloader feature set and issues, and the interface between bootloader and OS. We hope this activity will convince silicon vendors, their OEMs/ODMs, and system developers that supporting the GRUB2 community can speed up the adoption of advanced security and hardware features.
– Piotr Król, founder of 3mdeb
GRUB mini-summit 2019
Last year we have decided to talk over some key issues:
- Redundant GRUB2 env file
- TPM support in GRUB2 for legacy boot mode
- overview of GRUB2 security features
- Python 3 support in GRUB2
- AMD TrenchBoot support in GRUB2
Thank you community for being there with us, for raising your voices and fostering discussion that has it’s reflection in GRUB2 contributions of 2020. All the summary of raised issues you will find in our previous GRUB blogpost here. We are waiting tomorrow, once again for your perspective, ideas and voice. Let’s meet and talk over the important issues with GRUB/GRUB2 contributors. GRUB will always be the core axe of 3mdeb toolbox.
Summary
If you need bootloader support or you think we can help in improving the
security of your firmware or you looking for someone who can boost your product
by leveraging advanced features of used hardware platform,
book a call with us or
drop us email to contact<at>3mdeb<dot>com. If you are interested in similar
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