Intel Linux-Ready Firmware Developer Kit

The Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit provides much more information than simply stating whether the BIOS or EFI implementation on the system passes or fails. An interactive results viewer is built into the LFDK and for each test shows whether it failed, a warning was generated, or it passed. When selecting a test, a description is provided along with information that is more detailed. Some of the information is easily relevant to end-users, such as the ACPI fan tests, Ethernet testing, and checking for virtualization extensions, while others are much more focused for the firmware developer or quality assurance team. Among these other tests are HPET configuration, PCI Express MaxReadReq tuning, and DSDT AML verification.

Intel warns end-users that failure of any of these ~20 firmware tests doesn't necessarily mean the system is defective or won't work with Linux. Even when running a QEMU virtualized copy of the LFDK, there were three failures and three warnings with the Bochs BIOS. On a Lenovo ThinkPad R52 notebook, which actually works quite well with any recent Linux 2.6 distribution, there were three failures and two warnings.

After analyzing the automated firmware tests, the results can be saved, manual tests can be run, and there is support for additional hardware probing. When saving the results, not only are the results (the same information as what's found in the interactive viewer) dumped, but also plenty of firmware information to aide developers. An ACPI dump is done as well as the DSDT, LFDK error log, and a resources file. The original DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) is dumped along with the decompiled version. This isn't something unique, as the DSDT can be easily dumped within any Linux distribution and then disassembled using the Intel ASL compiler/decompiler, but it's handy for developers nevertheless.

For those out of the loop, the Differentiated System Description Table (DSDT) contains information and hardware configuration data that generates the ACPI namespace at boot-time. The dumped resources file is formatted in XML and contains the dmesg output, AML (ACPI Machine Language) output, MTRR (Memory Type Range Registers), and PCI information. These results can be saved to an attached USB driver or over SSH. One feature request we have would be formatting the results file in XML or HTML as opposed to just having the text output.