Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/4] Add multiboot support (x86) v2

[Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>]

François Revol schrieb:
>> François Revol wrote:
>>>> This patch implements support for Multiboot on x86 for -kernel.
>>>> Multiboot is a "new" approach to get rid of different bootloaders, 
>>>> providing
>>>> a unified interface for the kernel. It supports command line 
>>>> options 
>>>> and
>>>> kernel modules.
>>>>
>>>> The two probably best known projects using multiboot are Xen and 
>>>> GNU 
>>>> Hurd.
>>>>     
>>> While Haiku doesn't use it (yet, but it will probably never be able 
>>> to 
>>> load without a BIOS except with the gzipped kernel trick used on a 
>>> floppy image for CD booting), it'd be nice to have the -append 
>>> option 
>>> args forwarded by the BIOS so one could still use -append 
>>> regardless 
>>> the boot method used to pass options to the OS, in which case I'd 
>>> add 
>>> support for them in the Haiku loader.
>>>   
>> How can the BIOS pass such information?
>>
>> The BIOS boot specification doesn't have any notion of command line 
>> AFAIK.
> 
> Indeed, at least not the PC BIOS.
> OF has the concept OTH... and QEMU does pass it through IIRC, and Haiku 
> should be able to get it AFAIR.
> 
> The idea would be to have it pass it anyway through a multiboot frame.
> It would them behave just as if the OS was booted by grub and args had 
> been typed at boot time, as well as select the boot resolution.

Why would an OS want to parse multiboot structures but not implement
proper multiboot support? I mean, this really isn't anything
complicated. When you have enabled it to understand multiboot structures
you are only missing a handful of bytes for the multiboot header.

What is it that you need to do differently for Haiku?

Kevin