Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 17 Mar 2000 10:53:32 -0800 (PST) | From | Evan Langlois <> | Subject | Loading Linux from Linux - opinions |
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Whats the status of the "Loading Linux from Linux" patch? What is the chance of a patch like this making it into a stable release?
I've downloaded the LOBOS stuff and I'm gonna try doing some experimentation with that this weekend. Its occured to me that a single linux application running under a stripped down kernel (which could even reside on a DOS drive to get around 1024 cyl limitations), could provide a number of useful features if you can grab a kernel from any drive and boot it. Guessing you can boot a wintendo parition in a similar fashion. As long as LILO boots a stripped down, quick loading kernel, that kernel can be used to do all sorts of stuff including boot your main kernel, give a boot menu, or even some of the features of an OpenPROM system.
The idea would be to have something like this installed for you by your fav distribution (if you wanted it) as part of the install process since the installer will know more about how you set up your partitions and could provide a ready-to-eat implementation.
Way I see it : 1 - you get a free emergency repair kernel, could even have a copy of linload or something you can get to from windblows to boot the stripped down kernel which in turn gives you your boot menu so you can get to everything and fix it. Or shell out to a command line with vi ... 2 - full EIDE (or SCSI) driver, so you don't have a 1024 cyl limit as long as you keep the stripped down kernel on your first partition (like on a windows drive) loaded by LILO. Not the most secure, but if someone can hit the reset button and stick in a boot floppy, nothing is secure anyway). 3 - those with fixed frequency monitors can have the stripped kernel set the video mode (after booting - you miss the original boot, but it should be fast enough as you won't have any start-up or devices, just kernel load followed by fbset) so that when the important full-kernel boots we can see it happen without a serial terminal, without cluttering up modedb.c with every fixed frequency monitor just to get it to boot (added my NeXT monitor, but for anyone else its just clutter ... although being able to pass the full set of monitor timings to the kernel in the video= line would be nice too, anyone else think that could be useful for us people struggling with fixed frequency monitors?) 4 - a command line could load modules into the kernel to configure ethernet for network boots - was actually going to set up some sort of scripting language maybe. 5 - Configure and save boot options in a single interface, like a SUN prom, change defaults without re-running LILO 6 - Provide fancy GUI boot menus using microwindows/nanogui which build on FBcon so its really small and lightweight, we're talking K instead of Megs for a full GUI. 7 - if you wanna really avoid filesystem clutter, like if ur putting this on your windows filesystem or on a seperate /boot partition (how I get around 1024 now), you can make a disk image of a filesystem, like cramfs, and mount it through the loopback device to reduce the number of files and executables - might be good for a set of "emergency repair" tools.
I have some other ideas too, but I wanna play with it a bit and see how it goes. But wanted to get a lil feedback.
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