Joseph Smith wrote:
Scanning for drives has been considered before but always dismissed because it will potentially take a very long time for FILO to start if it needs to wait for drives to start.
Doesn't the drive have to start for FILO to invoke GRUB?
FILO never invokes GRUB. FILO has it's own code that implements GRUB-like functionality.
Yes, _the specified drive_ has to start before FILO can read from it.
But not _every drive_ needs to be checked, because the correct device has to be specified beforehand.
As an optional feature, everyone pretty much said they want to be able to do such a drive scan only a few days ago. Would be great if you want to hack on it! :)
I do think this would be better approach. I don't think scanning a top level directory would take very long.
The issue is not with filesystem structure. The issue is with drives. Scanning drives takes some time, at least a few seconds per drive or so.
Once the correct drive has been found, finding the boot files is usually quick because only few sectors needs to be read.
//Peter