On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 11:16:39AM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Yes, I'm curious, too. Which real world payloads work now that didn't work before?
http://grub.enbug.org/MultibootSystems has a list of noteworthy payloads using Multiboot. As I mentioned before, this list shouldn't be considered exhaustive, since Multiboot is commonly used for new small projects, in part due to the wide deployment of GRUB as a bootloader.
I think XEN needs the actual DOM0 kernel loaded as a module (which we can't do yet, can we?)
Xen (and for that matter, the Hurd) would need support for loading multiple code images, a feature which will be necessary if you want these as payloads, regardless on whether you use their existing Multiboot support or you replace it with something else.
In other words, my work didn't solve the Xen problem, but it brings you a step closer as it only leaves the multi-object part to be implemented, and doesn't require you to modify Xen itself.