Re: Grub for ia64

["bibo,mao" <bibo.mao@intel.com>]

Tristan Gingold wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 05:32:00PM +0200, Johan Rydberg wrote:
>  > Tristan Gingold <tgingold@free.fr> writes:
>  >
>  > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 02:11:57PM +0200, Johan Rydberg wrote:
>  > >> Tristan Gingold <tgingold@free.fr> writes:
>  > >>
>  > >> >> You're telling me that EFI on your IA-64 system does not relocate the
>  > >> >> program before start executing it?  That sounds strange.
>  > >> >
>  > >> > It does relocate EFI PEI images.  Unfortunatly there is no tools to create
>  > >> > EFI PEI objects on Linux.  The gnu efi tools are kludgy: they use standard
>  > >> > gcc and ld, create an ELF image and convert it to a PEI image.  But the
>  > >> > relocations are not converted, they are simply put into the data section.
>  > >>
>  > >> How hard would it be to write a converter ourselves, starting with
>  > >> util/i386/efi/grub-mkimage.c? 
>  > > Not that hard, but
>  > > * we'd better to have one grub-mkimage.c for all EFI targets
>  >
>  > I agree.
>  >
>  > > * working on binutils is even better.
>  >
>  > The key problem with this as I see it is that it would force people to
>  > have a cross-compiler suite installed, at least for i386 hosts.  Unless
>  > we can magically get the default installation to include PE-support.
> On my debian system, objdump -i:
> efi-app-ia32
> 
> It's already here!
> The binutils issue is mainly for ia64.  For i386, grub-mkimage.c works.
> 
> Tristan.
> 
> 
On i386 objcopy in binutils can convert ELF format into PE32, but application need
dynamically relocate itself so that PE32 image can be loaded to any place to execute.
For grub-mkimage.c application need not because grub-mkimage will generate dynamic
relocate segment. 
Two methods is ok for me, I prefer the easier one :)

thanks
bibo,mao