[9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[layup28]

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Has anyone managed to get graphics working on 9front  using Libreboot with libgfxinit only, i.e. with no VGA BIOS?
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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[Ron Minnich]

twenty years ago I did. But all those systems are long gone. It's
doable however.

(I did this with LinuxBIOS, now coreboot, from which Libreboot is derived).

On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 8:36 AM <layup28@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Has anyone managed to get graphics working on 9front  using Libreboot with libgfxinit only, i.e. with no VGA BIOS?
> 9fans / 9fans / see discussions + participants + delivery options Permalink

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[Emery]

With my x220 and coreboot the graphics are not initialized by 9front on coldboot.

if you boot into Linux, load the i915 module, then do a hot-reboot into 9front, then it works.

Cheers,
Emery

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[ron minnich]

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There is i915 support in coreboot, not sure how much of that libreboot got
when it forked.

ca 2002, David Hendriks and I got graphics working, which later led to this
fun video: https://youtu.be/DmK_SQI56fQ?si=cNhl1v-5ZR4f5VYM

I put the i915 support in coreboot while I was working on chromebooks. We
showed this can be fast: https://youtu.be/4qLDjHThCyE?si=KFAkWdZjG1ggsRlp
as compared to intel's incredibly slow graphics layer in UEFI. (that video
ignores Intel's VGA BIOS entirely; it is coreboot vs. linux graphics
startup).

Later, others greatly improved the coreboot graphics support. I have no
idea what libreboot has done, or if they've kept up. Libreboot did have a
desire not to use vendor graphics BIOS in startup (i.e. no blobs), and that
might be an issue.

as for coreboot, x220, and Plan 9: do you see anything at all on the screen
before linux starts?

I developed coreboot graphics support by watching all the ins/outs/memory
read/memory write that linux did.This was possible because,  at the time
(2012) Jesse Barnes, then at Intel, had worked hard to make LInux graphics
work without needing the Intel video BIOS: chromebooks in normal mode let
Linux do ALL graphics startup. IIUC, Intel did not keep that
BIOS-independence going, and I believe a BIOS-free graphics setup on Intel
display hardware no longer works.

If you really want to chase this down, you can do the same thing I did.
You'll be surprised at how little it takes to get that last step going.
Usually, it's something very simple. I think it would be nice to have
coreboot+plan 9+x220 working. We could then even consider using a 4 byte
address SPI part and put Plan 9 boot file system in firmware :-)

A handy way to test things out is to start up your x220, cpu in, and
experiment with poking the frame buffer. What has not been tried, but ought
to work, is cpu in, run linux in a vm, and let it bring the buffer up. That
would be really interesting.

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 8:05 AM Emery <emery@slow.janky.email> wrote:

> With my x220 and coreboot the graphics are not initialized by 9front on
> coldboot.
> 
> if you boot into Linux, load the i915 module, then do a hot-reboot into
> 9front, then it works.
> 
> Cheers,
> Emery

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[Жора]

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On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 4:36 PM <layup28@gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone managed to get graphics working on 9front  using Libreboot with
> libgfxinit only, i.e. with no VGA BIOS?
> *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions
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>

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[Jacob Moody]

For what it's worth, I was able to get a x200 I librebooted to get in to 9front by using 9front's igfx instead of vesa.
Might work for you if your intel generation is supported.

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[layup28]

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I’m not running linux here. only 9front. 
Booting from linux USB sticks works without any issues.


Using the image seabios_x200_4mb_libgfxinit_txtmode.rom:
With igfx:
- I get a screen glitch (like on photo i sent), but the cursor is drawn. However, I can't move it.
With vesa:
- It says there's no framebuffer (don’t remember the exact error) and continues in terminal mode.

Using seabios_x200_4mb_libgfxinit_corebootfb.rom:
When I boot directly with SeaBIOS, it shows at startup:
bootfile=/amd64/9pc64
boot
…and then it just freezes.

When I boot through U-Boot, everything works fine, even with VESA.

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[ron minnich]

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The thing we learned the hard way, is that on some hardware, you cannot set
up the graphics twice unless you do a reset in the middle and that is
difficult and sometimes impossible.

For one distro we did, webboot, we would always kexec another linux.

We found that, if we wanted graphics in the first linux with x11, we could
make the kexec of the final linux with x11 work with qemu, and not with
hardware; or with hardware, but not with qemu. It was a mess.

The fix in the end is never enable graphics until the last linux boots.

Just a data point, not sure that helps.

I can say the coreboot graphics init worked on many chromebooks. But Intel
fought it tooth and nail, so I also know it did not work in all.


On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 17:39 <layup28@gmail.com> wrote:

> I’m not running linux here. only 9front.
> Booting from linux USB sticks works without any issues.
>
>
> Using the image seabios_x200_4mb_libgfxinit_txtmode.rom:
> With igfx:
> - I get a screen glitch (like on photo i sent), but the cursor is drawn.
> However, I can't move it.
> With vesa:
> - It says there's no framebuffer (don’t remember the exact error) and
> continues in terminal mode.
>
> Using seabios_x200_4mb_libgfxinit_corebootfb.rom:
> When I boot directly with SeaBIOS, it shows at startup:
> bootfile=/amd64/9pc64
> boot
> …and then it just freezes.
>
> When I boot through U-Boot, everything works fine, even with VESA.
>
> *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions
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>

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[Ron Minnich]

I'm  familiar with that kind of display trash, it usually means some
set of incompatible display setup was done ... it's fun to debug but
surprisingly easy to fix, once you see what's up.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g8FMob25VZYxbWri2iFB8YiSL8gwF9vKJH3HGxr0xQU/edit?usp=sharing
describes the chromebook work; the 'cli' tool was very handy for doing
register testing, and was in fact how I got the earliest coreboot
support working.

The first time I finally got display, I ran the cli tool, walked over
to talk to someone about how I was never going to get it working, came
back, and realized ... it was working.

I checked and the code is still here:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/i915tool/

LINKONLOGS is a pun: link was the first google pixel chromebook and
that was its codename.

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 2:25 PM Жора <layup28@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 4:36 PM <layup28@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Has anyone managed to get graphics working on 9front  using Libreboot with libgfxinit only, i.e. with no VGA BIOS?
>
> 9fans / 9fans / see discussions + participants + delivery options Permalink

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Re: [9fans] Has anyone run 9front on Libreboot (libgfxinit) without a VGA BIOS?

[jon4coffey]

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I have had success getting my libreboot ThinkPad x200 to boot 9front as recently as two? months ago.  The x200 has a listing in /lib/vgadb so try

monitor=x200

but be prepared to wait a minute or two for it to boot.  It worked eventually for me.

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