From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:47:27 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:47:17 -0400 Received: from ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com ([166.70.28.69]:48501 "EHLO flinx.biederman.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:47:07 -0400 To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Gujin graphical bootloader 0.4 In-Reply-To: <9kuid8$q57$1@cesium.transmeta.com> <9l2p9e$89h$1@cesium.transmeta.com> <3B79550F.4030800@zytor.com> From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) Date: 15 Aug 2001 10:40:16 -0600 In-Reply-To: <3B79550F.4030800@zytor.com> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org "H. Peter Anvin" writes: > The point is that this belongs in the kernel image, so that it can be evolved, > not in the boot loaders, where it becomes static. These kinds of things will in > > practice change too quickly to be frozen into boot loaders. In principle I agree. But until I have thought out all of the angles I'll play with just about every idea. I will say though that having a 32bit entry point in a bootloader is fully reasonable as, if you are doing anything more than zImage the bootloader needs to switch into protected mode anyway. However having a the ability to switch back into realmode to do BIOS calls is also reasonable. The interesting case there is loadlin. But I fully agree that bootloaders should be as simple as possible with respect to the kernel. But I also have a major issue with the fact that rdev only works on x86. And even with linuxBIOS around it would be nice to compile a kernel that is x86-generic. That is one of the neater ideas of the alpha port. I know on the ppc port it splits up per bootloader. I don't have any problems with compiling for a specific environment but I don't want to make it mandatory. Eric