OpenCellular/scripts/newbitmaps/README

This directory contains examples of the new-style BIOS bitmaps, and a simple
(and ugly) tool to view the configuration file that describes how each
screen is displayed.

Old-style bitmaps:

In the Cr-48 BIOS there are four BIOS screens that may be presented to the
user. Each contains a graphic, a URL, and some informative text. The screens
are single bitmap images, hardcoded in read-only BIOS (because they have to
display even when the R/W BIOS and SSD are both completely erased). They can
be replaced at manufacturing time, but creating the screens is difficult.
The format is a compressed EFI firmware volume that is generated when the
BIOS is compiled. The result is an opaque blob that cannot be viewed or
edited with linux-based tools.


New-style bitmaps (version 1.0):

Future BIOSes will continue to display the same basic screens, but using a
different format. Each screen has separate bitmaps for the basic graphic,
the URL, and the informative text, and will be displayed by rendering each
component in order. This will allow us to modify and replace any bitmap
(most frequently the HWID), using standard command-line tools such as
imagemagick. Compositing each screen in this way also means that we can
easily provide localized BIOS screens or custom messages.


Note:

Because the bitmap images and display code is part of the Read-Only BIOS,
back-porting the new-style bitmaps to older devices is not possible.


Manual instructions:

The bmpblk_utility reads a config file and produces a binary bmpblock. The
config file lists the individual bitmaps and describes where to place each
one when displaying each screen. The bmpblock is then written into the BIOS
image with the gbb_utility. The bitmap_viewer program lets you view the
composited screens as described by the config file.

* First, get the bitmap_viewer working. This is best used OUTSIDE of the
  chroot. Test it by changing to the scripts/newbitmaps/images/1280x800
  directory and running "../../bitmap_viewer hwid_unknown.yaml". You may
  need to install some additional packages. For example, on Ubuntu you'll
  probably need to install the "python-yaml" and "python-wxgtk2.8" packages.

* Now make changes to the hwid_unknown.yaml config file, and use the
  bitmap_viewer to see how the layout looks. Hit Ctrl-R in the small window
  to reload the config file without restarting.

* The bitmap_viewer can display images in several different formats, but the
  BIOS is very limited (and may differ between x86 and ARM). For x86, ensure
  that you're using the proper format by converting any new bitmaps with a
  command like this:

    convert IN.bmp -colors 256 -compress none -alpha off OUT.bmp

* When you have the screens tweaked to your satisfaction, generate the
  binary bmpblock to embed into the BIOS.

    bmpblk_utility -c hwid_unknown.yaml bmpblock.bin

* Use the gbb_utility to modify the BIOS to contain our new set of bitmaps.

  NOTE: These commands are run (as root) on the device under test!

  NOTE: This will only work if the BIOS write-protection is disabled!

  Copy our new bmpblock over.

    cd /mnt/stateful_partition
    scp USER@SOMEHOST:/SOMEPATH/bmpblock.bin .

  Get a copy of the current BIOS.

    flashrom -p internal:bus=spi -r bios.bin

  Put our bmpblock in our copy of the BIOS

    gbb_utility -s -b bmpblock.bin bios.bin

  Reflash the BIOS with the new content

    flashrom -p internal:bus=spi -w bios.bin

* Reboot. You should see your new bitmaps appear whenever the BIOS screens
  are displayed. If you have more than one localization, you should be able
  to cycle among them with the arrow keys.

* If you want to examine a binary bmpblock that you've pulled from a BIOS
  image, the bmpblk_utility has options to display or unpack the binary.

    bmpblk_utility bmpblock.bin

    bmpblk_utility -y bmpblock.bin

    bmpblk_utility -x -d /SOME/SCRATCH/DIR bmpblock.bin

 Once you've unpacked it you can use the bitmap_viewer on the unpacked yaml
 file to see what it looks like. There's not (yet) a single tool that just
 displays the raw binary.



Automated instructions:

If you've got a LOT of HWIDs to generate, this is one way to do it. You can
do this entirely outside of the chroot if you've built vboot_reference
natively and put the resulting binaries into your $PATH.


* First, we generate the strings and bitmaps for each HWID:

    cd ./strings
    mkdir ./hwids
    cd ./hwids

  Put the list of new HWIDs strings into a file 'w':

    SAMS ALEX ALPHA-US
    SAMS ALEX ALPHA-GB
    SAMS ALEX ALPHA-FR
    SAMS ALEX ALPHA-DE
    SAMS ALEX ALPHA-ES

  You need to generate the HWID checksum numbers. I wrote this script, named
  'hwidsum', to append the digits to the string:

    #!/usr/bin/python
    import sys,zlib;
    me=' '.join(sys.argv[1:]);
    print me, ('%04u'%(zlib.crc32(me)&0xffffffffL))[-4:]


  Run another script like this to generate the checksums for the whole list:

    #!/bin/bash
    while read STUFF; do
      full=$(hwidsum "$STUFF")
      str=$(echo "HWID ${full}" | sed 's/ /_/g').txt
      echo "$full" > "$str"
    done < w


  And now convert the text files into bmps:

    ../text_to_bmp *.txt


* Move those HWID bmp files to the appropriate images directory:

    pushd ../../images/1280x800/
    mkdir ./hwids
    mv ~1/*.bmp ./hwids/


* Generate the yaml files for all these new HWIDs:

    ../make_yaml_from_hwids hwids/*.bmp


* Look at them with the bitmap viewer if you want.

    ../../bitmap_viewer hwid_sams_alex_alpha-us_4504.yaml


* Convert the yaml files into bitmap blobs:

    for i in *.yaml; do bmpblk_utility -c $i ${i%.yaml}.bin; done


* Test the bitmaps on a running system:

  As root on an Alex, for example, you'd say something like this:

    stop update-engine
    cd /mnt/stateful_partition
    flashrom -p internal:bus=spi -r bios.rom
    scp USER@HOST:/SOME/PATH/TO/hwid_sams_alex_alpha-us_4504.bin .
    gbb_utility -s \
      -i 'SAMS ALEX ALPHA-US 4504' \
      -b hwid_sams_alex_alpha-us_4504.bin
      bios.rom newbios.rom
    flashrom -p internal:bus=spi -w newbios.rom

  Then reboot and see what happens.