[openbeos] Re: x86 boot loader milestone
- From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 18:21:10 +0200 CEST
Hi Simon,
Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > The IA32 boot loader bindings are now mature enough to boot
> > OpenBeOS
> > from a hard drive if the BIOS supports LBA access (which should be
> > supported by every BIOS for some years now).
> Wow. Fantastic news Axel, you've made my day :D
Be welcome :)
> > You can also install it on a BFS image containing a valid boot
> > block,
> > and boot it using Bochs. Just make sure that you reboot after
> > you've
> > copied the files and unmounted the image, and before using Bochs to
> > avoid a bug in the BeOS cache.
> Would it be a long, hard process to get jam to make such a BFS image
> for
> testing purposes? That would be great.
Depends. Of course, we want to have an automated build, but it's
probably not possible to build an image file containing an OpenBeOS
installation that you could use right away with Bochs - the BeOS cache
doesn't allow this to work reliably, unfortunately.
However, it will be possible to install OpenBeOS on a mounted volume
using Jam. That one you can use directly to boot from, but again, you
won't be able to use it in Bochs until a reboot due to the BeOS cache.
There is not much we can do about it.
Right now, jam will still build the old-style kernel boot mechanism,
because that does result in a working kernel where you can actually
test your applications. It will be changed once we have hard drive
access from the kernel, too.
> The kernel is still in early pre-alpha according to the projet status
> stage.
> I realise these steps don't match the kernel very well, as NewOS
> itself
> is fairly stable. I assume you won't consider the OpenBeOS kernel
> alpha
> until it is feature complete with the BeOS kernel, and then it should
> progress
> through the various stages quite quickly?
>
> Just trying to understand what is left to do so I can have a better
> idea of the
> overall status of the project.
Basically, I understand "beta" to be feature complete, "alpha" to be a
work in progress. Actually, I wanted to switch to "alpha" as soon as we
have hard drive access. It's hard to estimate the status of the kernel
given those levels. Some parts are 100% done, others are 100% missing,
many are somewhere in between :)
And testing is actually something that is a lot of effort as well.
Bye,
Axel.
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