Re: GRUB and Google Summer of Code

From: Alex Zanetti de Lima <trustlix@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: The development of GNU GRUB <grub-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: GRUB and Google Summer of Code
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:46:30 -0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <201003301546.30857.trustlix@linux.vnet.ibm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4BB23431.3000007@gmail.com>

On Tue 30 Mar 2010 (14:26) Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko said 
> Michal Suchanek wrote:
> > 2010/3/29 Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko <phcoder@gmail.com>:
> >> -Some other hardware which may contain something bootable. We will
> >> probably have a network subsystem contributed by IBM before Summer so
> >
> > Is there some more information about this network  subsystem available?
> 
> No, I don't know more details myself except that I provided few
> skeletons for it. When IBM is ready we'll  hear from them. Until
> thentrying to push would only have negative results

Hi, I'm one of the guys working with grub2 at IBM. That's my first mail to the 
list :)

The default bootloader for PPC machines is still Yaboot (at least on RHEL and 
SLES), and our main goal here at IBM is to contribute code to grub2 to make it 
Yaboot's replacement for PPC systems (specifically IBM POWER5, POWER6 and POWER7 
machines).

The most important feature that we were lacking in grub2, from a PPC 
perspective, was netboot. We ported bootp/tftp support from yaboot to grub2, but 
the implementation was PPC specific, relying upon OFW's obp-tftp package to 
handle all network communication.

We discussed that with Vladimir, who pointed out the following drawbacks:
1) Current implementation was BOOTP/TFTP only. No support for other protocols.
2) Almost no shared code between architectures.
3) 100% dependent on OFW.

We are now working on a network infrastructure that could be shared by all 
platforms, including protocols, device drivers, etc. Gpxe project is a good 
start point, and most of things are being developed based on it.

Chances are that we'll have something working on x86 soon, and then we'll start 
adding support for PPC (access to PCI bus via OFW, VIO, device drivers for some 
very specific cards like ehea, etc).

So far Manoel Abranches is the only person (part-time) actually developing code 
and he's doing that based on the skeletons created by Vladimir (am still getting 
some approvals from IBM legal to contribute code...).

Cheers,
--
Alex Zanetti de Lima (trustlix)

> 
> > This sounds interesting.
> 
> Yes, it does
> 
> > Thanks
> >
> > Michal
> >
> >
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> 