Re: [PATCH 04/17] x86/boot: Remove the 'bugger off' message

H. Peter Anvin
2023-08-20T02:40:08Z

On 8/18/23 06:44, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> Ancient (pre-2003) x86 kernels could boot from a floppy disk straight from
> the BIOS, using a small real mode boot stub at the start of the image
> where the BIOS would expect the boot record (or boot block) to appear.
>
> Due to its limitations (kernel size < 1 MiB, no support for IDE, USB or
> El Torito floppy emulation), this support was dropped, and a Linux aware
> bootloader is now always required to boot the kernel from a legacy BIOS.
>
> To smoothen this transition, the boot stub was not removed entirely, but
> replaced with one that just prints an error message telling the user to
> install a bootloader.
>
> As it is unlikely that anyone doing direct floppy boot with such an
> ancient kernel is going to upgrade to v6.5+ and expect that this boot
> method still works, printing this message is kind of pointless, and so
> it should be possible to remove the logic that emits it.
>
> Let's free up this space so it can be used to expand the PE header in a
> subsequent patch.
>
> Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org
>

Good riddance.

Acked-by: H. Peter Anvin (Intel) <hpa@zytor.com>