Supporting extension ROMs and beyond...

ron minnich rminnich at lanl.gov
Fri Aug 8 10:12:00 CEST 2003


On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, SONE Takeshi wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 03:17:26PM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > However none of this will get into the core of LinuxBIOS, they will all be
> > separate ELF loadable components like etherboot.
> So, we need an external program that provides legacy BIOS compatibility,
> like ADLO.

I don't have quite the same opinion on this one. I would like to have 
Linux in flash -- we do that now. 

If I plug in the linux vga support, by boot path is simple. 

Linuxbios->Linux

The VGA support code is very simple. 

If I stick with this requirement that the VGA roms get supported by an 
external ELF piece, I have to do this:

linuxbios -> external ELF bit that does VGA ROMs -> some other bit that 
loads linux from flash -> linux

More and more pieces. ADLO is far more capability than I need. Therefore I 
intend to bring the VGA support forward to FreeBIOS2, based on my needs 
and comments from other linuxbios users.

I agree that in some sense it is "cleaner" to have VGA support in some 
external binary blob, but it is far more convenient to have it right in 
linuxbios itself. It works today, so I can't see strong reasons not to 
continue using it.

ron




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