Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 04:39:11 +0800 From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> 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 Message-ID: <199809302039.EAA14177@spinner.netplex.com.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 30 Sep 1998 15:20:43 EST." <199809302020.PAA13391@friley-185-114.res.iastate.edu>
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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
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