ELILO: EFI Linux Boot Loader / News: Recent posts

No major distros still using this tree and dropped from Debian due to being orphaned for a long time. If youre interested in carrying ELILO on grab the source and start a new project perhaps on github or your favorite OSS platform.

QUICK CHANGE SUMMARY

* Adds native x86x crossbuild functionality
build 32bit or 64bit versions from either environment via
make ARCH=ia32|x86_64 (the ARCH IS case sensitive).
make by itself will default to the native host arch.
* Add console reset call during initialization. thanks A. Steinmetz
* simplify output of no GOP warning text so it no longer looks like an error.
* MAJOR: Fixed Fault crash when EFI memory map changes from under elilo.
(from an outside interrupt in this case). When the EFI Memory map
changes after elilo has already built boot params to pass to the
kernel the EFI call to ExitBootSvcs just prior to boot will fail
because elilo has the old map key. This is valid EFI behavior, elilo
retries to pick up the new memory map and key but had already freed
the start params portion of boot params resulting in a NULL DEREF
crash reset once it hands the now bogus boot params to the kernel on
the 2nd successful call to exit efi and boot.
Thanks to Jerry Hoemann @ HP for reporting this bug.
* minor bugfix, fixed -m option broken. thanks Allan-lsk.... read more

elilo-3.14 released in January 2011.

With mainly stability updates (and for this reason at the time it was built against gnu-efi 3.0i base.

QUICK CHANGE SUMMARY

* Fixes for newly emerging x86_64 UEFI-2 boxes where long standing old
assumptions are borked.
* Uptake of SUSE and community patches
- add sysfs support for efi vars (formerly /proc/efi/vars)
- fix strncpy overflow
- fix bzimage alloc
- cleanups
- support longer command line
- yet some more mac fixes
- align elilo with latest kernel boot protocol format.
- new memory management strategy for initrd and kernel image loading.
* add text-mode command line option, force text-mode (bypass graphics probes).
* replace error output on GOP handle failed, downgraded to normal
print status with more informative output.
* Fix ia32 build issue with new gcc due to stack protector enforcement.... read more

Fixes console output on systems using ConSplitter (macs)
Fixes ExitBootServices intermittent failure
Fixes broken netbooting all archs.
Increase vmlinuz limits to 4MB(ia32), 8MB(x86_64).
Debug output cleanup.

...See Release Notes for Full details.

Two major bugfixes
- elilo hangs from memory overlap, copying initrd over kernel or vice versa
- elilo hangs when loading newer kernels not using default 1MB start address.

contains:
- some code cleanup, & minor fixes.
- Cleaned up nearly all compile warnings.
- fixed kernel start address x86_64 hang for relocatable kernels,
handle overlapping initrd & kernel memory allocation x86_64
- ported above patch to ia32. (ia64 already has relocatable kernel option.)

Additional patches from Intel and community and some bugfixes and hardening for x86_64 support.
elilo-3.7 Beta will continue to be available but not supported. Please submit any defects found via the
sourceforge bug submittal system under the tracker
tab on this page.

baring any QA hiccups from a final change going in today, elilo-3.8 should release this week with x86_64 fixes, some options parsing fixes and more additions for EFI-2.0.

-jf

x86_64 support added.

release notes & full list of changes here
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=91879&release_id=524148

This news submittal anounces 2 items. First: The elilo project is in transition of ownership to me, Jason Fleischli. I work in the same HP Open Source Linux Organization lab as the former maintainer Brett Johnson. Ive been working on (and continue to work on) Debian for commercial Telecom use for the last 4 years. Im new to elilo (and OSS maintenance for that matter) so bear with me as I take ownership of this project and get my bearings. I look forward to working on it though. Second: We've received new patches and a nice shiny new UEFI dual dual Xeon workstation from Intel (thank you much!) to add x86_64 support for elilo so i'll get those added and a beta (3.7) posted as soon as I can.... read more

After many man-minutes of exhastive testing, it's time for a stable release of elilo. Changes since 3.5pre2:

1) Fixed a textmenu bug.

New for this release:

1) Support new "vmm=" config file option for Xen/ia64
2) Lots of bug fixes.

See the changelog for more details

New for this release:

1) Support for compressed ia32 kernels.
2) Support for subnet-specific config files.
3) initrd handling bug fixed.

See the changelog for more details