[OpenPower-Firmware] SBE questions

[Stewart Smith]

"Marty E. Plummer" <hanetzer at startmail.com> writes:
>> To remove ECC use this tool from op-build
>> <op-build repo>/output/host/bin/ecc --remove ./sbe.bin.ecc --output sbe.bin --p8
>> 
> ^ this --p8 worries me; I assume you're still talking about p9 but this
> tool was made in the p8 era and they both use the same ecc algos?

Correct. There's another ECC algorithm in there, and I *think* it's
what's used on flash for the IBM FSP, but I'm not sure. The repository
where the 'ecc' binary comes from was thrown over the wall 5.5years ago
or so and was unmaintained until I gained god-mode on the open-power org
and merged my patches from years prior :)

Mind you, if anyone knows the origins, Dean is the person :)

> Otherwise, this worked, and it ended up giving me one single 32k image
> which the p9_xip_tool understood properly, along with non-garbage
> metadata.

It'd be really cool if you wrote all this up and blogged it somewhere.

Probably the most terrifying thing about hacking on OpenPOWER firmware
is bricking your SBE.

A utility that sits on and ships with the BMC to verify and reprogram it
if needed would be *fantastic*. Something that doesn't come with the
overhead of the (internal) debug tools that is.

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.