Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 03 Feb 2002 11:48:29 -0800 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: [RFC] x86 ELF bootable kernels/Linux booting Linux/LinuxBIOS |
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Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > O.k. I have been thinking about this some more, and I have come up with a couple > alternate of solutions. > > The simplest is the observation that right now 10MB is about what it > takes to hold every Linux driver out there. So all you really need is > a 16MB system, to avoid a device probing loader. And probably > noticeably less than that. The only systems I see having real > problems are old systems where device enumeration is not reliable, and > require human intervention anyway. > > A second is to just make certain there is some kind of fallback path > so if the image is too large have a way to load a smaller one. When > you consider that older systems had less memory it has a reasonable > chance of working properly. > > My final and favorite is to take an ELF image, define a couple of ELF > note types, and add a bunch those notes saying which pieces are > hardware dependent. So a smart ELF loader can prune the image as it > is loaded, and a stupid one will just attempt to load everything. And > with the setup for this not being bootloader specific it will probably > encourage device pruning loaders. > > Am I being optimistic or are there any pressing cases for callbacks to > the firmware? >
Ok, now let me ask the question that hopefully should be obvious to everyone now...
WHAT'S THE POINT?
All you're doing is an awfully complex song and dance to *avoid* implementing a solution that, while imperfect, is thoroughly established and has worked for 20 years.
-hpa
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