Re: [tboot-devel] SINIT ACM for X5650 and 5520 chipset?

[Cihula, J. <jos...@in...>]

> From: J Chapman Flack [mailto:jf...@ma...]
> Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 3:06 PM
> 
> Cihula, Joseph wrote:
> > We are working to make this SINTI ACM available very soon.
> 
> I see that it seems to be there now, thanks!
> 
> Now there is another thing I am curious about.
> 
> I see that the date of the module added on sourceforge is 5 April.
> 
> I also see that there's a firmware update for the box I am building, as of the same date:
> http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=19975
> 
> and its release notes include:
> 
> Other:
> - Added: ACM for Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 5600 series update to
>    production V1.2
> 
> Does that mean that the BIOS for this box is one of those that (as the MLE Guide puts it) "may
> already have the correct SINIT AC module loaded"
> at TXT.SINIT.BASE?

No--these platforms do not carry an SINIT in flash/BIOS.  The ACM referenced in the release notes is the BIOS ACM, which is at version 1.2.

> What does tboot do in that case?  Can tboot be used without specifying an ACM as the last module
> in grub, if the module is already loaded by BIOS?  Does tboot unconditionally load the module
> named in grub?  Or does it compare the Date fields and use the most recent (as the Guide
> suggests)?

Tboot works as per the MLE DG:  it will first go through all of the bootloader -loaded SINITs to find a match; then it will check if BIOS has loaded an SINIT; if there is a BIOS SINIT then it will compare dates and use the most recent; if there is only one matching SINIT (bootloader or BIOS loaded) then it will just use that.

> If the release note does mean that this BIOS includes the ACM, should I assume it's the same
> version as the one published on sourceforge, since they happened the same day?  The release note
> says "V1.2" and the filename on sourceforge is X5600_SINIT_16.BIN but I'm not sure that "V1.2" and
> "16" belong to the same numbering scheme.

The numbering in the SourceForge SINITs is the decimal version of the ACM.  Internally we use hex and have a convention of splitting the byte into a major and minor nibble, so that 18dec = 0x12 = 1.2.

> Please excuse the spray of questions ... if the box had arrived yet I would probably just be
> playing with it to see what happens, but instead I'm getting fidgety waiting. :)
> 
> Thanks,
> Chapman Flack
> 
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