Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 13 Sep 2005 12:42:21 -0700 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: [i386 BOOT CODE] kernel bootable again |
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Frank Sorenson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Pascal Bellard wrote: > >>Hello, >> >>Please find attached a patch to build i386/x86_64 kernel directly >>bootable. It may be usefull for rescue floppies and installation >>floppies. > > > Pascal, > > In commit f8eeaaf4180334a8e5c3582fe62a5f8176a8c124, build.c has already > changed, and I don't believe it's very compatible with this change. > > See > http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=f8eeaaf4180334a8e5c3582fe62a5f8176a8c124 > > Also, we'll need to see comments from H. Peter Anvin on this patch. > CC'ing him. >
Geometry detection by looking for error returns is fundamentally broken. Way too many non-traditional floppies (USB, IDE...) do not handle this at all, they will return successfully, with the data being the data from a sector from another track, and thus you end up with aliasing and a corrupt boot. You can do it with fingerprinting, but that's complex and error-prone.
In short, this made sense in 1991, but it hasn't made sense for a very long time now. Resurrecting bootsect.S is *NOT* a good idea.
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