Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 9 Aug 1999 11:42:11 +0200 | From | Dominik Kubla <> | Subject | Re: Kernels > 1M |
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On Mon, Aug 09, 1999 at 10:36:00AM +0200, Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Considering that nothing but bootsect.S itself uses syssize, the most > straightforward solution to the problem seems to be to change the unit > of syssize from paragraphs to sectors, to increase the header version > number in setup.S (not 100% clean, but the best approximation to a > version number for bootsect.S we have), and to update the checks > accordingly. >
Hi Werner et al.,
how about dropping the boot and setup code from the kernel entirely? Just move the whole stuff to the bootloader (as it used to be done with commercial Unices on PC's) and have it setup the whole 32Bit PM environment, load the (possibly zipped) vmlinux binary (not necessarily in this order), pass the config options on the command line (or through some reserved memory) and execute it.
Thus we would no longer need as86/ld86 to build the kernel (see the thread about this topic) and building the kernel would be the same as on SPARC/MIPS/ALPHA...
The next step then would be to merge MILO(Alpha), MILO(Mips), LILO and SILO (Werner. we talked about that over dinner back at Linux-Kongress in Würzburg, remember?) into a common bootloader for all architectures. That should make life a bit easier for the distributors and documentation authors ...
Are there any _REAL_ problems that would prevent this?
Yours, Dominik Kubla -- Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment. --Philip K. Dick. Author's Note, A SCANNER DARKLY, 1977
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