[openbeos] Stage 1 Bootloader

On the kernel team page i spotted a new item: stage 1 boot loader. Now when you look on the internet you see tons of different boot loaders, each doing exactly the same thing: loading the second stage loader.
Now there is a standard for booting: the multiboot standard (closely associated with GRUB) wouldn't it be an option to load with grub?
I don't know exactly what the BeOS first stage loader has to do, but I'd guess it has no idea about file systems and just loads the second stage loader from a blocklist. Grub can also load from block lists, and it can boot according to the mentioned multiboot standard.
So booting with grub as the default loader can make the first/second stage loaders obsolete (when booting by multiboot standard, probably requiring modification of the kernel-bootup) or if desired one can 'chainload' the old bootsector from BeOS. so compatibilty would be ensured if grub would be the default loader. This would take away the need to write a complete new loader, and one can immediately take advantage of the enhanced features of grub! For example freebsd can be booted by grub through loading the second stage loader. hmm somehow this paragraph confuses me...

Loading by multibooot standard would i guess e an item for R2, since it probably requires modifying the boot procedure. But not using yet another proprietary first stage loader, and taking grub for that, would not require any changes but take away some work....

Eike.


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