Re: [i386 BOOT CODE] kernel bootable again

[Coywolf Qi Hunt <coywolf@gmail.com>]

On 9/18/05, Giuseppe Bilotta <bilotta78@hotpop.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:56:08 +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> 
> >> This is probably a stupid suggestion, but here it goes anyway: the
> >> kernel has to be written on disk by something, right?
> >>
> >> So if the "something" knows (or can get to know) the sector/tracks
> >> layout of the disk it's writing the kernel onto, it could store this
> >> information in the bootblock (is there space for that?). The bootblock
> >> code would then just read this info and use it.
> >>
> >> Of course, this would mean that making a kernel-bootable floppy
> >> wouldn't be as simple as cp'ing the kernel image to /dev/fdwhatever,
> >> but if a script/program designed to do this was included with the
> >> kernel source (it wouldn't be too big ...) ...
> >>
> > I may be missing something here, but if you are going to do something
> > like that, then why not just use a real bootloader instead?
> 
> I'm not too much into this stuff, I don't even know the technical
> differences betwen booting from kernel-on-floppy or from a bootloader.
> My proposal was just to work around the "what's the track layout"
> issue in the kernel-on-floppy direct boot. Maybe you could see it like

Actually, DOS/Windows works that way. FAT filesystem stores the number
of sectors per track in its boot sector.

> a delayed bootloader process ... don't know.
> 
> But as I mentioned, it was probably just a stupid suggestion :)

You are too humble. It's not you, but linux bootsect.S stupid IMHO. ;)
-- 
Coywolf Qi Hunt
http://sosdg.org/~coywolf/