Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 16:22:59 -0400 (EDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Toerless Eckert <eckert@i4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: boot2 broken ? (booting from pst fails) Message-ID: <XFMail.20030414162259.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <200304142009.WAA26011@faui40p.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
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On 14-Apr-2003 Toerless Eckert wrote: >> > With boot2 being space challenged, why does it need to be a btx >> > client anyhow ? >> >> Because then the code to read UFS can be in C instead of assembly. :) Are >> you offering to rewrite the entire bootstrap in assembly and maintain it? > > No, i was rather thinking about the good ol' mechanism of burning the sectors > for "loaders" into the boot1/boot2 bootstrap code, foregoing the need > to put UFS into boot2 and allowing it to be a simple real-mode loader. The idea of burning the sectors into the bootstrap is very _very_ unacceptable. As you pointed out, FreeBSD does try to avoid dirty hacks like this for the sake of a cleaner and more flexible design. Hardcoding the sectors would make things like booting kernels directly from boot2 as well as booting /boot/loader.old in the case that /boot/loader breaks impossible. Also, apart from your hardware, FreeBSD is quite compatible with the large majority of PC hardware. We boot directly off of 3ware ATA RAID controllers where I work, so I really think your claims are rather overstated. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/
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