SchOS/boot/uefi
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Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
Nexoniarz 132a2981b1 uefi, vm: 2 MB pages where the CPU has no 1 GB ones
Every page table SchOS built -- the loader's, which the kernel starts on
and the other CPUs start through, and the kernel's own direct map and
device window -- mapped memory in 1 GB pages. Intel's desktop CPUs
before Haswell do not have them, and there the PS bit in a PDPT entry is
reserved: the first access after the switch is a page fault that cannot
be handled either. An HP all-in-one with an Ivy Bridge i3 showed "Placing
and starting the kernel" and reset.

Both now check CPUID 0x80000001 EDX bit 26. Without it the loader maps
the low 4 GB through four page directories of 2 MB pages, placed below
the kernel where nothing reuses them, and keeps the staged kernel
segments below 4 GB; the kernel gives each gigabyte of its direct map
and of ioremap() a page directory of its own.

Neither KVM nor QEMU's emulator enforces the reserved bit, so the fault
itself could not be reproduced here. With the fallback forced on, the
kernel boots at 2 and 8 GB, both CPUs start, and evtest passes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
2026-10-24 11:45:18 +02:00
..
efi.h display: a 64-bit framebuffer address, no mirroring onto itself 2026-10-23 15:46:42 +02:00
main.c uefi, vm: 2 MB pages where the CPU has no 1 GB ones 2026-10-24 11:45:18 +02:00
README.md licence: SchOS is GPL-2.0-or-later, no longer Apache-2.0 2026-10-22 08:48:45 +02:00
startup.nsh boot/uefi: a working UEFI loader, with one known limitation 2026-08-09 17:13:09 +02:00

UEFI loader

The loader. This directory once existed only so the BIOS path could be moved into boot/bios/ without pretending the split was hypothetical; it is now the only path there is.

See ../README.md for the hand-off contract a loader has to satisfy. The short version: the kernel wants long mode with paging on, its ELF segments placed, a 24-byte-entry E820-shaped memory map, and framebuffer geometry — and it does not care which firmware produced them.

What this will need, in rough order:

  1. A PE/COFF target. clang can emit one directly (--target=x86_64-unknown-windows -fuse-ld=lld-link), so no new toolchain: the same LLVM install already builds every other target here.
  2. The handful of UEFI structures actually used — the system table, boot services, LOADED_IMAGE, SIMPLE_FILE_SYSTEM, GRAPHICS_OUTPUT. Written from the specification rather than by importing gnu-efi or EDK II, which is both a licence question and a large dependency for something this small.
  3. GetMemoryMap translated into the same 24-byte entries e820.c already parses. Not a second format for the kernel to learn.
  4. ExitBootServices before touching the memory it described.
  5. Graphics Output Protocol for the framebuffer, filling the same VBE_INFO_ADDR structure the kernel reads.

The image goes at EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI on a FAT ESP, which also means the ISO carries a single El Torito EFI entry.