On 5/22/08, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 22.05.2008 17:01, C. Scott Ananian wrote: > > On 5/22/08, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A statement of security is a nice theft deterrent. This may change once > the bad guys realize circumvention is very doable.
Again, it's a matter of cost. All security is bypassable for some cost. How much do you want to make it cost, and how much does it cost you? > > Yes, there were some design details with Gen 1 hardware that turned > > out to make it difficult to safely reflash, even though the flash chip > > is big enough to accomodate a backup OFW. The EC is perfectly capable > > of recovering OFW, but the EC memory map coincides with the erase > > block size of the SPI flash, unfortunately, so there's a critical > > window during which all of the EC code must be erased. We hope to fix > > that with Gen 2. > > There are SPI flash chips on the market which have an erase granularity > of half the size of the EC code or even less. Selecting such a chip > should work even for Gen 1 unless I'm missing a key detail. See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5314 > >> > k) more open software: we may not need an EC, and if we do we may be > >> > able to ensure its code is open. We may change the wireless device, > >> > and/or be able to switch to open firmware for it. > >> > >> I believe item k) was already in the contracts with Quanta and Marvell, > >> unless the official announcements back then were wrong. It has been > >> stated repeatedly by OLPC officials that the only thing preventing a > >> full open source wireless firmware is the lack of time for porting the > >> code to another embedded OS. There were also statements like "We are > >> working with Quanta to release EC source code", so I think that's also > >> mostly a problem with lack of time. > >> > > > > Yes, it was intended, but the production schedule and component > > availability forced us to build on some pre-existing closed-source > > components, and now that we've reached this point in the manufacturing > > cycle for XO-1, we have very little leverage left with Quanta. We did > > make our best effort, but there were also some unforeseen interactions > > with the manufacturing contract we signed with Quanta. Quanta > > designed the motherboard and took responsibility for making > > modifications for manufacturability and to address defects, and now > > they've ended up with significant IP rights in our schematic. This > > has made it hard to properly support the open EC effort, since by the > > terms of the contract we can't even show them the pinout of the EC. > > We recently hired Paul Fox as firmware engineer, so we're still hard > > at work on this. We hope that we can work out agreements with Quanta > > to publish at least pinout information for the EC. It's complicated > > by the fact that most of Quanta's team working on the XO-1 design has > > moved on to other projects now. > > > > > That's really a nice writeup of the current situation. Could you please > put it (perhaps even verbatim) into the wiki and link it from the EC and > OpenEC pages? Thanks! I'd appreciate if you (or someone else on devel@) could do so. > > The http://www.open80211s.org/ effort is being funded by OLPC to try > > to address the wireless firmware issue (among other goals). I don't > > really know what mesh solutions are being considered for XO-2, but > > there are more vendors with 802.11s solutions now than there were when > > we designed the XO-1, so we have more choices and leverage. > > That's good to hear. Again, adding this info to the wiki would help > public perception a lot. Ditto. Open80211s.org really needs better publicity; there are a lot of experiments I'd like to try with the 802.11s protocols if I had someone with the time to hack into the code & get the numbers. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel