ELF boot and Multiboot
SONE Takeshi
ts1 at cma.co.jp
Fri Jun 13 05:44:01 CEST 2003
On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 11:20:23PM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > In the source of mkelfImage, linux-i386/convert_params.c,
> > there is some code to retrieve information like memory map
> > from Multiboot information structure.
> > However, ELF images created by mkelfImage does not have
> > Multiboot header, according to 'mbchk' of GRUB boot loader.
> > In what situation is this code supposed to run (and tested)?
>
> The partial multiboot support in etherboot, is where it was used.
Thanks for the information.
> > If one added a (trivial) Multiboot header in the head.S,
> > the resulting kernel could be loaded from GRUB, while it could also
> > be loaded by ELF boot of LinuxBIOS and Etherboot?
>
> It probably could. And I would not have a problem with something
> like that in theory. The multiboot spec is quite poorly done,
> so I am not a major fan. I think I would prefer to just add a
> dummy elf segment at the start of the file with that information
> in it. From mkelfImage 2.5 that would probably be the easiest thing
> to do.
I couldn't find an easy way to do it.
What PT_* type would that segment have?
> I would almost rather fix GRUB to use something sensible and portable
> like ELF notes. The multiboot data structure is a disaster in terms
> of both future expansion, and of expansion by multiple groups.
I considered to add ELFboot support to GRUB, but adding Multiboot
header to ELF kernel looked much easier.
--
Takeshi
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