---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 09:32:03 -0600 From: Ronald G Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov To: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: Fwd: BOUNCE linuxbios@listserv.lanl.gov: Approval required:
Hello, List,
I need the following clarification about the LinuxBios boot up information
1. Can LinuxBios boot from CDROM? 2. Can LinuxBios boot from a SCSI Disk? 3. Does anybody have a FAQ or collected information about how the LinuxBios bootup sequence works?
Thanks, Balbir Singh.
_______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Balbir Singh writes:
Hello, List,
I need the following clarification about the LinuxBios boot up information
- Can LinuxBios boot from CDROM?
- Can LinuxBios boot from a SCSI Disk?
Yes. But the drivers have not yet been written.
- Does anybody have a FAQ or collected information about how the
LinuxBios bootup sequence works?
Not especially as this is a work in progress, at the moment.
The design: - All booting under LinuxBIOS will load standalone executables that do not need BIOS calls to access the hardware - Information will be passed in the LinuxBIOS table to the loaded kernel. - The LinuxBIOS core will have a dumb bootloader with one hardware driver and it will load static ELF executables, this is to prevent feature bloat. - Either the LinuxBIOS core loads the final kernel, or it loads a bootloader. - Either the bootloader is stupid and scans ~= the first 8K of a device looking for an ELF image to boot, or it is smart and parses filesystems.
On the side of stupid bootloaders, I have just finished enhancing the development version of etherboot: http://www.etherboot.org So that it has allows the specification of a boot order, (compile time, run time or a cmos option). This supports quite a few NICs, and IDE, and floppies. Though the code needs a little more stabalization work.
The bootloader story with LinuxBIOS is a work in progress, but some good options are starting to emerge.
Adam Agnew, and Ollie Lho have a forked version of etheroboot with filesystem support. The infrastructure is in place so it can probably be merged cleanly.
There is work on using the kernel as a bootloader with a linux booting linux patch.
I have targeted etherboot first because it can be quite small, allowing for more options in rom chips. With every driver compiled in etherboot is ~= 65KB, and with the eepro100 and the ide driver it is ~= 15KB.
Eric
On 29 Aug 2002, Eric W Biederman wrote:
- Can LinuxBios boot from CDROM?
- Can LinuxBios boot from a SCSI Disk?
Yes. But the drivers have not yet been written.
Unless you boot linux from flash. If booting linux from flash, the drivers are the linux drivers. We hope to have this demo'ed on the cwlinux.com nodes in the near future.
Either way, at some point, we'll be able to boot just about anything without the normal BIOS in there.
ron
Ronald G Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov writes:
On 29 Aug 2002, Eric W Biederman wrote:
- Can LinuxBios boot from CDROM?
- Can LinuxBios boot from a SCSI Disk?
Yes. But the drivers have not yet been written.
Unless you boot linux from flash.
Unless you use Linux as the bootloader. Yes I agree. That code is immature enough to be significant.
If booting linux from flash, the drivers are the linux drivers. We hope to have this demo'ed on the cwlinux.com nodes in the near future.
Using Linux as the bootloader should prove interesting.
Either way, at some point, we'll be able to boot just about anything without the normal BIOS in there.
That is the plan.
Eric
- All booting under LinuxBIOS will load standalone executables that do not need BIOS calls to access the hardware
There's one important thing missing (though it's implied), which is that LinuxBIOS must *initialise* all the system hardware, as well as providing methods for using it.
This is a step that most people don't see. My observation that this is what actually takes up much of the time (it certainly seems to create a lot of traffic on the list).
-
Eric W Biederman -
Peter Lister -
Ronald G Minnich