Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 23:25:04 -0600 From: Warner Losh <imp@rover.village.org> To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Cc: pechter@lakewood.com, terry@lambert.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Boot file system idea! Slick Message-ID: <E0wqXRZ-0002zQ-00@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:13:13 %2B0930." <199707220143.LAA25905@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> References: <199707220143.LAA25905@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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In message <199707220143.LAA25905@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Michael Smith writes: : ... this is just one small step from "boot from a kernel image on a : DOS partition". I know that the ARC BIOS MIPS boxes used exactly this approach. The bootstrap was loaded from a FAT file system. That bootstrap then loaded other things from either the FAT file system (if it was still using the BIOS code) or from some other convenient location (if it had enough of a driver to cope with the hardware). NT, I think, used the raw device and groked NTFS where it loaded its drivers before throwing away the BIOS. Trouble was, you needed to have a working FAT fs, or you couldn't copy new kernels/boot code to the partition (OpenBSD/arc has not boot loader, its kernel is in the right format). So I think it is a cool idea, so long as it isn't mandatory :-) Warner
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