Steve Gehlbach steve@nexpath.com writes:
ron minnich wrote:
I think there is going to be continued use of the ide/floppy stuff without etherboot. I have requests for that all the time. It's going to have to stay. I support only loading elfboot images from linuxbios. It just makes too much sense.
Does linuxbios in the current version support elfboot images from ide/floppy (directly, without etherboot)? I guess if it does I don't see it.
Yes. The switch on the ``rom loader'' is the same on code, for either the elf loader or the other one.
One issue I have with elfboot images is the inability to dynamically pass parameters to the zero page (specifically the vga cursor location). I understand the idea of not locking the boot mechanism into the bios, but there are pros and cons.
As ron mentioned putting enough information in the LinuxBIOS table so the code in mkelfImage can properly position the vga cursor location is straight forward.
The final step of booting Linux is pretty independent of the other linuxbios code, though, so it is easy to patch in an alternate technique for someone (like me) that has specific requirements.
Right. But before we give up on a common mechanism I would like to see if we can figure out how to build a general purpose solution.
Eric