Method to provide autonomic boot recovery
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsMichael Rothman, Andrew Fish, Vincent Zimmer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In some embodiments, the invention involves a system and method relating to autonomic boot recovery. In at least one embodiment, the present invention utilizes an out-of-band (OOB) microcontroller to safeguard boot information to be used in the event of a boot failure. The OOB microcontroller enables the preservation of “Last Known Good” boot configurations as well as providing an agent to provide self-healing to a platform which might have run into some type of corruption of critical data. In some embodiments a variety of intelligent filter mechanisms are enabled to allow a user to target the preservation of only certain types of configuration data. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
Claims20
A system for autonomic boot recovery in a platform, comprising:
- a platform having a first processor and a second processor;
- the first processor being communicatively coupled to a non-volatile (NV) memory store, the NV memory store to store firmware boot information configured to boot the platform and load an operating system, the first processor having access to a shared storage area for passing messages to and from the second processor;
- and
- the second processor being communicatively coupled to a protected non-volatile (NV) memory store, the protected NV memory store being inaccessible to both a boot firmware and the operating system running on the first processor, the second processor having access to the shared storage area for passing messages to and from the first processor, the second processor to store last known good boot information in the protected NV memory store, and to initiate recovery using the last known good boot information when a boot failure of the first processor is identified.
A method for autonomic boot recovery of a first processor on a platform, comprising:
- a second processor on the platform receiving an indication from the first processor, when the first processor has booted successfully;
- determining, by the second processor, last known good boot settings for the first processor;
- storing, by the second processor, the last known good boot settings in a protected memory store not accessible to the first processor;
- identifying, by the second processor, when the first processor has failed to boot properly;
- and
- initiating, by the second processor, a reboot of the first processor when the first processor has failed to boot properly, using the last known good boot settings.
A machine accessible medium having instructions for autonomic boot recovery of a first processor on a platform, that when accessed cause a second processor on the platform to:
- receive an indication when the first processor has booted successfully;
- determine last known good boot settings for the first processor;
- store the last known good boot settings in a protected memory store not accessible to the first processor;
- identify when the first processor has failed to boot properly;
- and
- initiate a reboot of the first processor, when the first processor has failed to boot properly, using the last known good boot settings.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.