Re: [RFC] x86 ELF bootable kernels/Linux booting Linux/LinuxBIOS

H. Peter Anvin
2002-02-01T18:27:28Z

Eric W. Biederman wrote:

>
> What is magic about interactivity? What makes this a different
> problem? We approach booting from totally different perspectives,
> which makes communicating clearly hard.
>
> If you spell out individual problems I will show you how I would solve
> them.
>

It makes it a very different problem because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE
BOOTING UNTIL THE USER TELLS YOU.

In fact, depending on just exactly what you're doing, you might not even
know what you're booting until you have already gotten several items
downloaded (consider, for example, a device-probing bootloader.)

Therefore, the bootloader must be able to obtain boot medium services
not just once and for all, but on a back-and-forth basis. There needs
to be an API between the boot loader and the firmware, and just
"stuffing it into memory" doesn't count.

-hpa