Tag: Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud

iPXE adds UEFI HTTP Boot support

~ hucktech ~ 1 Comment

Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud of HP posted a message to the EFI development list, with an update on iPXE, supporting UEFI HTTP Boot:

It looks like iPXE has been updated to work with UEFI 2.5 HTTP Boot, and tested with OVMF. Their page also includes instructions for configuring the DHCP server to enable HTTP Boot, and building OVMF with HTTP_BOOT enabled. It would be interesting to see if iPXE EFI version will directly use EFI_HTTP_PROTOCOL or carry its own TCP/IP HTTP code.

Excerpt from iPXE site:

Version 2.5 of the UEFI specification introduces the UEFI HTTP Boot feature. You can use the basic UEFI HTTP Boot client to chainload iPXE from an HTTP server, eliminating the need for a separate TFTP server in your boot infrastructure. The simple UEFI HTTP Boot client will download and boot iPXE. You can then use any of iPXE’s more advanced features such as HTTPS, Digest authentication, POST requests, scripts, menus, customisable code signing etc. to download and boot your operating system. UEFI HTTP chainloading provides a way to load iPXE on systems which do not have iPXE present as part of the UEFI firmware. If your system already provides iPXE as part of the UEFI firmware, then you do not need to use UEFI HTTP chainloading.

More information:
http://ipxe.org/appnote/uefihttp
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.bios.edk2.devel/2756

HP/Intel presentation on HTTP Boot and Redfish

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud, a System Firmware Architect at Hewlett-Packard, was kind enough to give me an URL to a recent presentation at Intel Developer Forum (IDF), on UEFI HTTP Boot and DMTF Redfish:

STTS001: Firmware in the Data Center:
Building a Modern Development Framework Using UEFI and Redfish REST APIs.
Mark Doron, Intel
Dong Wei, HP
Samer El-Jah-Mahmoud, HP

The HP/Intel co-presentation is on HTTP Boot and Redfish, and the UEFI based deployment solution on HP ProLiant Servers. Topics include PXE -vs- UEFI HTTP Boot, IPMI -vs- Redfish, and clarification of HP’s implementation -vs- recent UEFI 2.5/TianoCore implementation. I wish I could find audio or video archives of this talk, not just slides. 😦

I’m not a fan of URL-shorteners, and this is a LONG URL, I think you need all the stuff after the .pdf extension:

https://hubb.blob.core.windows.net/e5888822-986f-45f5-b1d7-08f96e618a7b-published/0ed65053-1511-4d28-b55c-4e0813a0519a/STTS001%20-%20SF15_STTS001_100f.pdf?sv=2014-02-14&sr=c&sig=RJybmBnFV2JOPeXMlwn1UB9DHcQTC7cZfkPkupXc5kw%3D&se=2015-08-25T18%3A50%3A04Z&sp=rwd

Also, check out the UEFI videos and other resources at HP’s site:
http://www.hp.com/go/proliant/uefi

More Info on UEFI 2.5 HTTP Boot Implementations

~ hucktech ~ 1 Comment

Earlier, I made this blog post on UEFI 2.5’s new HTTP Boot feature. At that time, I was unaware of some details, like if this feature will be implemented in TianoCore, or only in commercial products. HP gave a talk at the Spring UEFI Forum on UEFI 2.5 HTTP Boot (to replace PXE) and DMTF Redfish (to replace IPMI), so I presume some new HP products will have these new features soon, if not already. On the EFI development list, I asked a question about Tianocore and vendor support of UEFI HTTP boot, as well as DMTF Redfish, and got 2 replies, one from Intel and one from HP.

Ye Ting of Intel replied and said:

“Intel is working on implementation of UEFI 2.5 HTTP boot support.”

Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud of HP also replied, and said:

“Both HTTP Boot and Redfish are very new standards. HTTP Boot got standardized as part of UEFI 2.5 in March. Redfish is still not even 1.0 (last published spec is 0.96.0a, with a target 1.0 spec sometime this month according to DMTF). It is expected that implementation will take some time to catch up to the spec. At the same time, PXE and IPMI have been there for quite some time, are implemented across the board on servers (and many clients), and are already in wide use. I do not expect them to go away anytime soon. But the goal is to switch over to HTTP and Redfish/REST over time, especially as they enable new use cases and capabilities that were not possible (or easy to do) before. The first step though is to get the specs implemented. As Ting explained, Intel is working on UEFI 2.5 HTTP Boot implementation (that I expect will show up in EDK2. I see the header files submitted already). DMTF is also working on a Redfish mockup/simulator that can be used to exercise clients. HP ProLiant Gen9 servers already support proprietary flavors of both HTTP Boot (or “Boot from URL”) and Redfish (or the “HP RESTful API”). I do not know of any other servers that implement such technologies at this time.”

So, it sounds like HP is the only vendor that supports UEFI HTTP Boot at the moment, and Intel is working on an implementation. If Intel’s implementation is part of TianoCore, other vendors may use it.

I’m looking forward to a TianoCore implementation, as well as DMTF’s Redfish simulator.

Thanks to Ye Ting and Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud for the answers!

Spring Plugfest presentations uploaded

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

The PDFs of the presentations from last months’ UEFI Forum plugfest have been uploaded to uefi.org.

http://www.uefi.org/learning_center/presentationsandvideos
(scroll about half-way through the page, after the Youtube videos…)

* System Prep Applications – Powerful New Feature in UEFI 2.5 – Kevin Davis (Insyde Software)
* Filling UEFI/FW Gaps in the Cloud – Mallik Bulusu (Microsoft) and Vincent Zimmer (Intel)
* PreBoot Provisioning Solutions with UEFI – Zachary Bobroff (AMI)
* An Overview of ACPICA Userspace Tools – David Box (Intel)
* UEFI Firmware – Securing SMM – Dick Wilkins (Phoenix Technologies)
* Overview of Windows 10 Requirements for TPM, HVCI and SecureBoot – Gabe Stocco, Scott Anderson and Suhas Manangi (Microsoft)
* Porting a PCI Driver to ARM AArch64 Platforms – Olivier Martin (ARM)
* Firmware in the Data Center: Goodbye PXE and IPMI. Welcome HTTP Boot and Redfish! – Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud (Hewlett Packard)
* A Common Platforms Tree – Leif Lindholm (Linaro)

This’ll be a very short blog, as I’m busy reading 9 new PDFs… 🙂 I’ll do blogs on some these specific presentations in the coming days.