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Date:      Sat, 3 Jan 1998 13:26:09 -0800 (PST)
From:      Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
To:        Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD ELF status?
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.3.96.980103132351.14790K-100000@critic.cynic.net>
In-Reply-To: <19980101164804.30732@keltia.freenix.fr>

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On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Ollivier Robert wrote:

>   Considering the boot blocks size issue, it is more of an all or nothing
>   thing because if we want to boot our shiny new kernel, we need the new
>   boot blocks. If someone can do the Mithical 3-Stage Bootblock, it would
>   be easier (no I'm not volunteering :-)).

Actually, the easiest solution to this sort of thing is to follow
what many other systems (sun, alpha, etc.) do and have your basic
boot blocks load in a file containing the second-stage bootstrap
from the root filesystem. (Usually you have a utility called
"installboot" which programs the block numbers of this file into
the first-stage bootstrap.) Then you can have a boot program that's
essentially as long and complex as you need.

(NetBSD/i386 recently changed to doing things this way.)

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca	   Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	   Through infinite mist, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC  (604) 257-9400	   In code possess'd of invisible folly.




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