Q:

How Can I Debug A Bios Better

I am trying to reverse engineer a firmkit in a bios, but in general I would like to know how can I debug a bios better.
I found a way to attach IDA to a vmware instance usign a GDB session GDB Debugging With VMware, but it seems like I am always racing to against the bios and boot up of the VM. I am wanting to have it stop in a place that I can follow and make sense of.
In general, What are some better practices when debugging a bios? Is IDA a decent debugger for this task? Is there something more meant for this task? Any other ideas are welcome also, I am really wanting to focus on reversing malware that is written to the bios.
Thanks!

A:

You can try running your BIOS in QEMU. QEMU's -S option will pause boot until a debugger (gdb) is attached. IDA's debugger apparently works fine with QEMU, according to this article: https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/support/tutorials/debugging_gdb_qemu.pdf

