Difference between Linxubios native's Elfboot and Linuxbios native's Filo

[Eric W. Biederman]

Mathieu Deschamps <mdeschamps at mangrove-systems.com> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> Since i have mostly 'directly choose' Filo, i haven't had
> much time asking for the difference between Linuxbios native's Elfboot
> and Linuxbios native's filo. I know you did made some work around
> theses... 

The native ``filo'' is scheduled for deletion, it touches hardwaremain
which it should not.  As implemented it is a maintenance nightmare and
an implementation of policy and I refuse to support it, in the core of
LinuxBIOS.  Until just a little while ago I thought it was much less
intrusive so was not forcing the issue.
 
> (i have read the doc of Sone Takeshi and i have the features of filo.)
> 
> Could you explain me what differences there are and/or whether 
> this one best suited for DoC or CF or other types i'am ignoring ?
> Please also let me know what type of filesys elfboot boots, and other
> thing about support

ELF boot is a minimal loader just good enough to load something real
out off some device.   ELF boot just grabs an ELF image at the offset
in a device it is pointed at.  The image can be sparse so it can exist
with partition tables and filesystems.  The trivial solution is to put
a partition right after partition table for the ELF image.  More
interesting forms of coexistance are possible by noone has implemented
more than a proof of concept.

If you want to use filo which understand filesystems and partitions
get the real one. It has been developing faster and it appears to have
more features.

Eric