4 ms·

That's true. They don't officially support the Raspberry Pi because it needs proprietary drivers and thus breaks the "chain of trust" needed for flashing Libreb

by eloy 10y ago

That's true. They don't officially support the Raspberry Pi because it needs proprietary drivers and thus breaks the "chain of trust" needed for flashing Libreboot. It's a bit over-the-top paronoid to expect firmware modifying software in GPU drivers, but I understand their point.

inyorgroove 10y ago
Hm, well I have always run it headless. Should be possible to make sure the GPU driver isn't ever loaded.
- LukeShu 10y ago
  The VC4 GPU actually is the primary chip; it boots the ThreadX operating system on the VC4 first, then ThreadX loads the user-configured system onto the ARM core. Whether you run headless or not, ThreadX is running on the VC4.
- erlehmann_ 10y ago
  > The Raspberry Pi boots from its GPU and only non-free software is currently available for the GPU, even starting the machine requires a large (2MB) blob of non-free, unsupportable software https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi
  - ashitlerferad 10y ago
    Also from that page: Broadcom publicly released some code, licensed as 3-Clause BSD, to aid the making of an open source GPU driver. The "rpi-open-firmware" effort to replace the VPU firmware blob started in 2016: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware. See more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11703842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11703842
LukeShu 10y ago
To call the binary blobs on the Pi "GPU drivers" is an understatement. The VC4 is running the full ThreadX operating system. The Pi is closer to a VC4 board with a secondary ARM coprocessor tacked on than it is to an ARM board.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eloy 10y ago
  Oh wow, I didn't knew this. Will look into this, thanks.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    All the same, is your adversary really going to use this to attack your machine? They'd have to predict a number of things quite in advance, as well as sneak an attack into the blob.

by eloy 10y ago

inyorgroove 10y ago

Hm, well I have always run it headless. Should be possible to make sure the GPU driver isn't ever loaded.

LukeShu 10y ago
The VC4 GPU actually is the primary chip; it boots the ThreadX operating system on the VC4 first, then ThreadX loads the user-configured system onto the ARM core. Whether you run headless or not, ThreadX is running on the VC4.
erlehmann_ 10y ago
> The Raspberry Pi boots from its GPU and only non-free software is currently available for the GPU, even starting the machine requires a large (2MB) blob of non-free, unsupportable software https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi
- ashitlerferad 10y ago
  Also from that page: Broadcom publicly released some code, licensed as 3-Clause BSD, to aid the making of an open source GPU driver. The "rpi-open-firmware" effort to replace the VPU firmware blob started in 2016: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware. See more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11703842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11703842

LukeShu 10y ago

To call the binary blobs on the Pi "GPU drivers" is an understatement. The VC4 is running the full ThreadX operating system. The Pi is closer to a VC4 board with a secondary ARM coprocessor tacked on than it is to an ARM board.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
eloy 10y ago
Oh wow, I didn't knew this. Will look into this, thanks.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  All the same, is your adversary really going to use this to attack your machine? They'd have to predict a number of things quite in advance, as well as sneak an attack into the blob.