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On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 12:42:06AM -0700, Jim Gifford wrote: > I have been working on a project to create a Pure 64 bit distro of > linux, nothing 32 bit in the system. I can accomplish that with no > issues pretty much on all platforms, with the exception of the > bootloaders. It just seems odd, that all the bootloaders seem to have > gcc -m32 in their makefiles.> > Silo on the Sparc has gcc -m32> Grub on the x86 platforms has gcc -m32> > The only one that builds and works is Lilo, which most people are moving > away from.> > So for my question, why does a bootloader have to be 32bit? > Anyone got 64 bit bootloaders for Sparc or x86_64 machines? > Are there technical limitations that bootloaders can't be 64 bit? > If we can't have a pure64 environment, why does the Kernel support it? It depends on the mode the CPU is in, at boot time. Also, there are size constraints, as 64-bit code is usually larger. There's nothing stopping you from writing a bootloader that immediately put the CPU into 64-bit mode, and then proceeds from there... Jeff - 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/ | |||||||||
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