Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:05:32 -0400 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Cc: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>, "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net> Subject: Re: Boot loader too large Message-ID: <201407151305.32820.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20140711225043.GH50976@over-yonder.net> References: <CANuCnH9K_wSPkgrAzujDG5M72Uvuvj0ooNN%2BFFLUCFsvv6b7Ow@mail.gmail.com> <53C06780.8010702@freebsd.org> <20140711225043.GH50976@over-yonder.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Friday, July 11, 2014 6:50:43 pm Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 03:38:56PM -0700 I heard the voice of
> Nathan Whitehorn, and lo! it spake thus:
> >
> > I don't honestly remember where that number came from. It's at line
> > 72 of usr.sbin/bsdinstall/partedit/partedit_x86.c. If 128 works
> > better, I'm happy to change it, but it would be nice to know what
> > the actual bounds here are before putting in a new arbitrary number.
>
> src/sys/boot/i386/pmbr/pmbr.s says
>
> -------------
> next_boot:. incl (%si). . . # Next LBA
> . . adcl $0,4(%si)
> . . mov %es,%ax. . . # Adjust segment for next
> . . addw $SECSIZE/16,%ax. . # sector
> . . cmp $0x9000,%ax.. . # Don't load past 0x90000,
> . . jae err_big. . . # 545k should be enough for
> . . mov %ax,%es. . . # any boot code. :)
> -------------
>
> (err_big being printing the "Boot loader too large" message). Though
> 0x90000 is actually 576k, not 545, but presumably there's some other
> adjustment lopping off bits somewhere; that's 62 sectors diff.
The boot code is not loaded at offset 0, it is loaded at offset 0x7c00 (the
same address the BIOS loads boot loaders):
.set LOAD,0x7c00 # Load address
...
#
# We found a boot partition. Load it into RAM starting at 0x7c00.
#
movw %bx,%di # Save partition pointer in %di
leaw PART_START_LBA(%di),%si
movw $LOAD/16,%bx
> Regardless, I settled on 512k for my boot partitions (after finding
> the above error when I previously decided "it's a few dozen k, I'll
> just set aside a meg to be safe" and then discovered the whole
> "not-booting" thing that caused.
512k should be fine even if it is a bit excessive. Also, larger partitions
might actually increase boot time, but perhaps not noticably.
--
John Baldwin
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201407151305.32820.jhb>