SeaBIOS

SeaBIOS

Developer(s)	Kevin O'Connor
Stable release	1.7.2.1 / February 28, 2013 (2013-02-28)
Development status	Active
Written in	C
Platform	x86
Size	440 kB
Available in	English
Type	BIOS
License	GNU LGPLv3
Website	www.seabios.org

SeaBIOS (formerly known as "legacybios") is an open source implementation of a 16-bit x86 BIOS. SeaBIOS can run in an emulator or it can run natively on x86 hardware with the use of coreboot. Runs on 386 or later and requires a minimum of 1 MB of RAM.

SeaBIOS is the default BIOS for the QEMU and KVM virtual machines and can be used with the Bochs emulator.

SeaBIOS has been tested with the GNU GRUB, LILO, SYSLINUX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeDOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD bootloaders.

The build system relies on the GNU toolchain.

A menu to select the boot device from can be accessed through the F12 key.

SeaBIOS has support for APM 1.2, EDD 3.0, SMBIOS 2.4, MultiProcessor Specification and BBS. No support for ESCD and xHCI.

Features

SeaBIOS is the default BIOS for QEMU

• Graphical bootsplash screen (JPEG and BMP).
• USB keyboard and mouse support.
• USB drive booting support.
• Boot from USB Attached SCSI.
• Support for 32-bit PCI BIOS calls.
• ATA DMA and bus mastering support.
• AHCI controllers support.
• Support USB UHCI, OHCI and EHCI host controller interfaces.
• Support systems with multiple VGA cards.
• Boot menu that allow booting from any drive or any CD-ROM (El Torito).
• BIOS Boot Specification (BBS) calls.
• Rebooting on Control-Alt-Delete key press.
• Dynamic e820 map generation.
• Logical block addressing (LBA) 48-bit.
• POST Memory Manager (PMM).
• Paravirtualization, Xen HVM, Virtio.
• Payloads (LZMA compressed).
• VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) 3.0.
• PCI Firmware Specification v3.0.
• SeaBIOS as a CSM for UEFI. OVMF
• Virtual machine host notification of paravirtualized guests which panic via the pvpanic driver.

External links

• Official website
• http://www.coreboot.org/SeaBIOS
• http://code.coreboot.org/p/seabios/