Re: [PATCH][TAKE 3] THE LINUX/I386 BOOT PROTOCOL - Breaking the 256 limit

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>
>> Well, obviously, since apparently LILO doesn't properly null-terminate 
>> long command line.
>>
>> Thinking about it a bit, the way to deal with the LILO problem is 
>> probably to actually *usw* the boot loader ID byte we've had in there 
>> since the 2.00 protocol.  In other words, if the boot loader ID is 
>> 0x1X where X <= current version (I don't know how LILO manages this 
>> ID) then truncate the command line to 255 bytes; when this is fixed in 
>> LILO then LILO gets to bump its boot loader ID version number.
>>
>>     -hpa
> 
> I don't understand...
> 
> If LILO worked until now, it should continue to work after applying this 
> patch, since nothing was changed from its perspective. It will continue 
> to provide 255 characters + null command line, so even if you have 1024 
> max command-line, then you will still receive truncated to 255 chars.
> 

Does anyone know the actual details of the LILO breakage?  If the 
problem is that LILO doesn't null-terminate the string when it's too 
long, then we can deal with this automatically, without introducing 
compile-time options (which were already once rejected.)

If the problem is with LILO booting *old* kernels, then that's going to 
have to require some LILO changes, and probably a boot revision bump.

	-hpa