Re: [ANNOUNCE] Gujin graphical bootloader 0.4

Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@xmission.com)
15 Aug 2001 10:40:16 -0600


"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> The point is that this belongs in the kernel image, so that it can be evolved,
> not in the boot loaders, where it becomes static. These kinds of things will in
>
> practice change too quickly to be frozen into boot loaders.

In principle I agree. But until I have thought out all of the angles
I'll play with just about every idea.

I will say though that having a 32bit entry point in a bootloader is
fully reasonable as, if you are doing anything more than zImage the
bootloader needs to switch into protected mode anyway. However having
a the ability to switch back into realmode to do BIOS calls is also
reasonable. The interesting case there is loadlin.

But I fully agree that bootloaders should be as simple as possible
with respect to the kernel. But I also have a major issue with
the fact that rdev only works on x86. And even with linuxBIOS around
it would be nice to compile a kernel that is x86-generic. That is one
of the neater ideas of the alpha port. I know on the ppc port it
splits up per bootloader. I don't have any problems with compiling
for a specific environment but I don't want to make it mandatory.

Eric
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/