Re: lilo vs other OS bootloaders was: FreeBSD makes progress

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:

> > So of course I realize this wouldn't happen any time soon, but has any
> > discussion taken place regarding enhancing the bootloader (grub? Steal
> > FreeBSD's?) to load modular drivers very early, and possibly abstracting
> > SMP/UP from the kernel proper? Wouldn't this be a better solution than
> > initrd?
> 
> All the discussion we have has been based on seriously enhancing and
> expanding the use of the initrd/ramfs layer. Remember we can begin running
> from ramfs without interrupts, pci bus scans or the like. The things it cant
> do are - pick a kernel by processor type, pick SMP/non SMP.
> 
> As it happens both of those are things that are deeply buried in the whole
> compile choices and how we generate the code itself - so they do need to
> be boot loader driven (or user driven)
> 
> So the path for ACPI could indeed go
> 
> load kernel
> load initial ramfs
> Discover we have ACPI
> load acpi core
> load acpi irq router
> load acpi timers
> [init hardware]
> load ide disk
> load ext3
> mount /

Sounds about right.  

If we really need to do weird things like pick a kernel by processor
type, or pick SMP/non SMP.  You can even do those from an initramfs
with a linux  booting linux kernel patch.

Eric