[haiku-development] Re: EFI (was: multi-selection semantics)
- From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 19:33:06 +0200 CEST
Ingo Weinhold <bonefish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Not quite. If the boot platform (BIOS, Open Firmware, EFI) presents
> the USB
> disk as it would present any other disk (I believe the BIOS does just
> that,
> and OF is saner anyway), then our boot loader already supports
> booting from
> those disks.
Exactly - it would just need to tell the kernel that it was loaded from
USB, and make those modules available.
> > I agree that having an initramfs isn't simpler, but I would say
> > that it is a
> > bit more flexible than a monolithic bootloader:
initramfs for the standard boot is a bad solution, as it would force
you to update it for every new supported hardware or hardware changes
(just like Linux).
> In case of networking you're right, though, since the boot loader
> would
> probably need to implement all the "high level" protocols we want to
> support.
That's true.
> BTW, we already have a method similar to initramfs, which is used on
> a boot
> floppy (or CD). The kernel and required modules live in a tgz archive
> that
> the boot loader reads straight from a fixed position on the disk. I
> guess it
> wouldn't be all that hard to support retrieving that archive from
> another
> channel (e.g. TFTP).
>
> I wouldn't use the initramfs method by default (i.e. for booting from
> standard disks), but for network boot, it might indeed be the best
> choice.
Not only for network boot - also for coping with buggy or incapable
firmware. For example, I wanted to use the tarfs to boot the PPC
version on the Pegasos later - or at least until I have found ways to
work around that firmware in a sane way :-)
I would think it should be possible to link the tarfs into the boot
loader, such that the network and firmware loader would automatically
load everything we need in a single go - and that would also allow us
to remove the networking mini stack from the boot loader (even if
optionally).
Bye,
Axel.
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