Coreboot conference Bonn 2015
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Invitation letter
Dear vendors, developers, users and interested parties,
on behalf of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) Germany I would like to invite you to the coreboot conference and developer meeting on October 9-11 2015 in Bonn, Germany.
Target audience
This conference and developer meeting is geared towards manufacturers of hardware (processors, chipsets, mainboards and servers/ laptops/ tablets/ desktops/ appliances) as well as developers of firmware with an interest in coreboot and the possibilities it offers as well as (potential) coreboot users. Both professionals and hobbyists are invited.
Who will host the conference
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in Germany will host the conference in Bonn, Germany. As the national cyber security authority, the goal of the BSI is to promote IT security in Germany. For this reason, the BSI has funded coreboot development in the past for security reasons.
Date
The date of the coreboot conference is Friday October 9 to Sunday October 11, 2015. This is scheduled directly after Embedded Linux Conference Europe to make travel arrangements easier for people attending both events.
When should you attend
If your main interest is forging business relationships and/or strategic coordination and you want to skip the technical workshops, Friday (and possibly Saturday) will be the outreach day of talks, presentations and discussions.
If your main interest is doing development, you can use the separate developer room next to the during all three days of the conference.
Call for presentations
We are looking for interesting talks/presentations about coreboot related topics for the first (and possibly second) day of the conference. Please note that those presentations are not intended to be advertisements or company portfolio presentations. Expected duration is between 10 and 45 minutes.
Deadlines
Submission: Please send the title, a brief summary, the expected duration and name/organization of the speaker to coreboot-conference@bsi.bund.de until September 21. We will notify you of acceptance until September 28. If you want us to make sure the slides work fine with the projector at the venue, please submit your final slides in pdf form before October 7.
Call for discussion topics and development suggestions
We hope to stimulate discussion and foster new ideas as well as explore ways to improve code, development and deployment. The format for this will be a few minutes (1-5) of presenting your idea/topic followed by discussing it with the audience for approximately 5-20 minutes.
Deadlines
While there is no formal deadline for submission, we'd appreciate a submission to coreboot-conference@bsi.bund.de before October 2 to be able to list the topic on the agenda to allow others to think about the topic in advance.
Call for profiles
This is the chance to tell others what you're doing, what you can offer and in what area you'd like to collaborate. If desired, we can attempt to distribute your profile to other conference participants before the conference.
Deadlines
Please submit such profiles before September 30 to coreboot-conference@bsi.bund.de.
Call for developers
If you want to do development all day, every day, just come and do it. We have power, networking and some spare hardware (please tell us in advance if you need something on site, we might have it in our lab).
Travel information
If you wonder about how to reach Bonn, there are three options available by plane:
- The closest is Cologne Airport (CGN), 30 minutes by bus to Bonn main station.
- Next is Dusseldorf Airport (DUS), 1 hour by train to Bonn main station.
- The airport with most international destinations is Frankfurt Airport (FRA), 1 hour by train to Bonn main station.
Another option is travelling by train:
- Bonn (main station: Bonn Hbf) is reachable by high-speed train (ICE), and other high-speed train stations (Cologne, Siegburg) are reasonably close (30 minutes). http://www.bahn.de/p_en/view/index.shtml is the easiest way to check your public transport options (train, buses etc.).
Travelling by car:
- Use a GPS navigation device with up-to-date maps, otherwise you may find yourself unable to go where you want due to subtle changes of turn restrictions in Bonn. Be warned that rush hour traffic in the morning and afternoon (Mo-Fr) can add delays of up to an hour if you're trying to get into or out of Bonn. Inside Bonn rush hour traffic is much less severe, expect roughly twice the expected time between 7am and 9am as well as between 4pm and 6pm.
Conference location
Wissenschaftszentrum Bonn
Ahrstrasse 45
53175 Bonn
GERMANY
Getting there
http://www.stifterverband.info/veranstaltungen/wissenschaftszentrum_bonn/anfahrt/index.html (German only) An English version of the directions will be made available soon at http://coreboot.org/coreboot_conference_Bonn_2015
Accommodation
Accommodation is not centrally organized, but if desired we can point you to websites listing hotel contact information and/or booking services as well as the local tourist information office. We also have a small allotment of affordable bed&breakfast rooms at the venue reserved for conference participants, just ask us.
Spare time activities
If there is enough interest, it might be possible to get a tour of the former top secret bunker of the German Federal Government on Saturday evening. More info at http://regbu.de/Fremdsprachen/GB1.html Besides that, Bonn and Cologne have lots of tourist attractions (e.g. Cologne Cathedral, excavations of ancient Roman sites, a rich cultural life, ...).
Food and drinks
More info will be posted to http://coreboot.org/coreboot_conference_Bonn_2015 shortly.
Date and time
October 9-11 2015
- Friday: 9:00-19:00
- Saturday: 9:00-16:00
- Sunday: 9:00-19:00
Signing up / Registration
There is no fee, attending the conference is free.
To enable us to estimate the number of attendees (for catering etc.), please notify us ASAP whether you will attend the conference at coreboot-conference@bsi.bund.de. Thank you!
Should you need a personal invitation email to justify attending the conference, please tell us and we'll try to oblige.
All information is also available at http://coreboot.org/coreboot_conference_Bonn_2015
Sincerely,
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
Agenda
TBD, evaluating submissions right now.
Friday
Saturday
Morning presentations over Hangouts
Linux-As-Bootloader
Linux-As-Bootloader is an attempt to revive the old LinuxBIOS model of storing a stripped down Linux kernel alongside the firmware in XIP memory (e.g. NOR flash). This approach allows us to leverage the power of Linux to give us maximum features and capabilities without duplicating a lot of kernel code. This is particularly useful for systems that have non-trivial drivers for storage, filesystems, network, etc. which may be used to boot the machine.
I will try to have a couple demos prepared to demonstrate this on x86 and ARM systems by bundling a kernel with Busybox and diagnostic utilities on the firmware ROM and booting Linux from main storage. Detailed instructions, scripts for building one's own Busybox rootfs, etc. will be posted on the coreboot wiki.
(See also: JELTKA [1])
Presenter: David Hendricks (dhendrix)
U-root
U-root is an embedded environment written in Go. Its aim is to provide an embedded environment where the user can inspect the source code and modify programs on-the-fly and potentially become smaller than binary-based environments as more utilities get bundled.
U-root includes only 5 binaries in its distribution: go, 6c, 6g, 6l, 6a. All other programs are compiled from source upon the first invocation (cached in memory thereafter), and compilation usually takes on the order of a few hundred milliseconds. U-root currently includes support for basic UNIX utilities and network utilities including a simple webserver.
Presenter: Ron Minnich (rminnich)
Flashrom
Flashrom is a utility for programming ROMs that is commonly used by firmware developers as well as in support and manufacturing processes. This talk will attempt to summarize interesting developments upstream, in the ChromiumOS fork, considerations for manufacturing and field support versus end-user usage, and plans for the future.
Presenter(s): David Hendricks (dhendrix), possibly others
Sunday
Participants
- Stefan Reinauer, Google Inc
- Georg Wicherski, CrowdStrike
- Wim Vervoorn, Eltan BV
- Gerard Duynisveld, Eltan BV
- Werner Zeh, Siemens AG
- Fabian Kunkel, BAP AB
- Nico Huber, secunet Security Networks AG
- ~30 other participants so far, waiting for OK to list them here
Who brings what
If you intend to bring hardware and/or need hardware you can't travel with, please either add it to the Talk:Coreboot conference Bonn 2015 page or mail coreboot-conference@bsi.bund.de.