From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 In-Reply-To: <19991123133536.013861> Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 18:07:52 +0100 To: Cort Dougan CC: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org, paulus@linuxcare.com From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Subject: Re: bootloader & head.S weirdness (patch) Message-Id: <19991123180752.027815@mailhost.mipsys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: Ok, I posted the very first version of this bootloader. I'd appreciate any comment, suggestion, etc... It's called "yaboot" and is on my test page It's targeted for newworld machines only (machines with a working OF that can load ELF binaries). It has a quik-like interface. The config file must be named "yaboot.conf and located next to yaboot itself, currently I put both on the first HFS volume of my disk, this way, I can launch it with the simple OF command "boot hd:yaboot". (Note that it's better to type boot hd:p,yaboot where "p" is the partition number. If you don't do so, the bootloader will have to look at all partitions it can read on device "hd" until it finds yaboot.conf since I didn't manage to find out the partition number I was loaded from). It supports loading files (both kernel and initrd) from any supported OF disklabel/filesystem, and is had built-in ext2 support (only on Apple partition maps for now). I'll add a built-in ISO (OF one doesn't seem to work correctly) soon and also support for ext2 on PC disklabel partition maps when I find some time> Note also that currently, loading files from ext2 can be very slow, this will be fixed in a future version. (The first time I tested, I thought it was crashed, there is no spinning thing nor progress bar yet). The kernel is loaded at 0x1000000 (16Mb). Currently, I've not been able to boot successfully unless I apply the patch I posted earlier (that disables the MMU after prom_init). I'll probably add an option for specifying the load base on a per-kernel image basis. The bootloader itself uses the range 0x200000->0x400000 (2Mb->4Mb) for now. The syntax for a kernel image path (or initrd path) is a normal OF syntax, for example: hd:8,/boot/vmlinux means the file "/boot/vmlinux" on partition 8 of device "hd". (hd is an alias to the internal IDE disk of most macs). The parsing is a little bit different than what quik used to do, so be careful. I'll add a README and a sample config file with the next version. Ultimately, this will allow bootable CDs for Macs (with the help of miBoot for oldworld machines), and with a bit more GUI and the help of an installer, we'll be, I hope, the primary bootloader for newworld Macs. I plan to slowly abandon BootX support for those machines since it involves too many hacks to work around various issues related to getting rid of MacOS and problems with devices MacOS put in a non-reset state). ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/