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To: Chris Csanady <ccsanady@friley-185-114.res.iastate.edu>
cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/boot/common load_elf.c Makefile.inc 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 30 Sep 1998 15:20:43 EST."
             <199809302020.PAA13391@friley-185-114.res.iastate.edu> 
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 04:39:11 +0800
From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
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Chris Csanady wrote:
> 
> Ok, this sounds good.  I have been wondering for quite a while though
> how to actually use the new boot blocks.  I will be installing
> FreeBSD/alpha in a few days, and this part of it is unclear to me.
> 
> Can someone provide a simple explanation of how the new boot blocks
> actually work, and how to install them on the alpha and i386?
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris Csanady

I can't speak for the alpha, but the i386 situation so far is:
- This is a work-in-progress. There are some very rough edges, beware!
- mkdir /boot
- touch /boot/boot.conf # you can put commands here that get run 
automatically at boot.  THings like "load kernel", "load nfs.o" etc.
- Boot as normally.. At the boot: prompt type:  /boot/loader (just like a 
normal kernel).
- It starts the BTX mini-kernel and the third stage runs in there with 
BIOS access via vm86 mode.  (this is really cool :-).
- It then kicks off the command prompt where you can load/unload modules 
and do a whole heap of thing according to Mike's whiteboard. :-)  Things 
like have it probe for PCI and PNP cards and automatically load drivers 
for the cards present, and so on.  One day this will get implemented :-).
- So, either wait for it to load /kernel automatically, or run a "load /
kernel", "boot" or "boot /kernel".  The boot.conf script runs these 
commands too.

Oh yeah, you can "gzip /kernel" and it'll load /kernel.gz without anything 
special.

To have the normal bootblocks run the 3rd stage automatically, make sure 
you have recent bootblocks (disklabel -B wd0 (or da0/sd0)), and
"echo /boot/loader" > /boot.config    (note different filename).

You get the usual 5 second pause, so you can override it and run the 
kernel directly.  This is really handy for testing because we can have a 
dozen different versions of the loader available and all useable from the 
bootblocks.

Once this is all finished, the present bootblocks should be able to go on 
a severe diet and made less noisy, and will default to loading a 3rd stage 
automatically unless something like a ctrl key is held down during boot 
(like win98) - at which point you can type in /boot/loader.old or whatever.

Cheers,
-Peter