From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1Gmz8f-0006O4-Aw for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:56:13 -0500 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Gmz8d-0006NJ-Sr for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:56:11 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Gmz8d-0006Mg-1e for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:56:11 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Gmz8c-0006Mc-Uj for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:56:10 -0500 Received: from [192.18.98.31] (helo=brmea-mail-1.sun.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1Gmz8c-0001qR-4z for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:56:10 -0500 Received: from jurassic.eng.sun.com ([129.146.106.31]) by brmea-mail-1.sun.com (8.13.6+Sun/8.12.9) with ESMTP id kAMKu8on006740 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:56:08 -0700 (MST) Received: from [192.9.61.60] (punchin-josephb.SFBay.Sun.COM [192.9.61.60]) by jurassic.eng.sun.com (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8) with ESMTP id kAMKu7OR379460 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:56:07 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4564B959.10102@sun.com> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:55:53 -0800 From: Joe Bonasera User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (X11/20060925) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: grub-devel@gnu.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Grub-devel Digest, Vol 33, Issue 19 X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GRUB 2 List-Id: The development of GRUB 2 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:56:12 -0000 grub-devel-request@gnu.org wrote: >> >> Just to be clear. For grub2 on x86, will it be true that there is only >> a single grub2 binary that understands both elf32 and elf64? > > Yes. > >> Would the different tags i86-pc vs x86_64 (if any) be determined by >> knowing if which type elf gets loaded? > > My personal opinion is that we should not pass any information to the > kernel about what format it is provided in. I agree about that, the OS should intrinsically know it's own format. :) However, it shouldn't have to figure out what format the data passed to it from the boot loader is in. If I boot a 32 bit kernel on a 64 bit capable platform/boot loader, the 32 bit kernel shouldn't have to deal with figuring out if it's getting 32 or 64 bit information from the boot loader. I think it's pretty common for people to install both 32 and 64 bit OS mixes on a single box. (I'm composing this on a machine that can boot either 32 bit windows, 32 bit Suse, 64bit Fedora, 32 or 64 bit Solaris partitions) all from one copy of grub and one copy of menu.lst. > > If the image is an ELF64, it will be loaded as an ELF64. So in your > case, for x86_64 hosts, provide the kernel as an ELF64 image. For > IA-32, provide an ELF32 image. Requiring that would be a big restriction from grub 0.9x, where the multiboot info passed to the booted OS is always in a fixed 32 bit format. Making that information (the "Multiboot Information Format" section of http://grub.enbug.org/MultibootDraft) variant based hardware capability would greatly complicate the OS side of things. Specifically a 32 bit OS would have to be able to decode both 32 and 64 bit versions of the data. Yuck. If grub2 really needs to make the format/content variant, I would much rather see it vary based on the target OS type. Or better yet, just always use the larger size data types/content - even for 32 bit booting. Joe > > ~j > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: not available > Type: application/pgp-signature > Size: 190 bytes > Desc: not available > Url : http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/grub-devel/attachments/20061122/c632780d/attachment.bin > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Grub-devel mailing list > Grub-devel@gnu.org > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel > > > End of Grub-devel Digest, Vol 33, Issue 19 > ******************************************