The wiki is being retired!

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system.

This page documents coreboot usage with NetBSD. It is probably terser than it could be, as it mostly just describes differences from the more-commonly-documented Linux procedures.

Building coreboot on NetBSD

GNU make is required to build coreboot, install it from pkgsrc/devel/gmake.

Use coreboot/util/crossgcc, you may have to work around an issue with the path to the gcc sources.

Building SeaBIOS on NetBSD

Build SeaBIOS with the previously mentioned crossgcc. You may need to (temporarily) use pkgsrc/shells/bash as your shell.

Using NetBSD/x86 with coreboot

Interrupt routing

Legacy interrupt routing (the PCI interrupt line register) is traditionally not implemented by coreboot on many mainboards. MPBIOS or ACPI will be required otherwise.

NetBSD does not (without patching) search for a MPBIOS floating pointer at the location coreboot usually places it. SeaBIOS does relocate this pointer structure however.

BIOS calls

(This section is probably only relevant when not loading via SeaBIOS.)

NetBSD/i386 GENERIC still makes some BIOS calls after boot(8):

isapnp(4)
mca(4)

Removal of these subsystems from your kernel config(5) file removes these calls.

Due to the nature of x86_64, BIOS calls on NetBSD/amd64 are not a problem, as they cannot be made from long-mode.

coreboot-related utilities

Both nvramtool and flashrom are in pkgsrc.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

In case this is not legally possible:
I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

NetBSD