Date: Mon, 02 Oct 1995 10:49:30 -0400 From: Robert Withrow <witr@rwwa.com> To: hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1 will require a minimum of 8MB for installation. Message-ID: <199510021449.KAA14101@spooky.rwwa.com>
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I have a suggestion that you (i.e. hackers) probably won't like,
but why not uncompress the kernel *from* the boot media. The
way this would work would be kinda like how VMS boots. There
would be a tertiary bootstrap whose job it would be to read
and uncompress the kernel into the proper place in memory and
start it running.
I'm not real current in how FreeBSD boots, but I guess that the
primary bootstrap (on the boot sector, or on the network card,
or whatever) loads the secondary bootstrap which does some
diagnostics, hardware initialization, memory sizing, etc.etc.etc.
and, currently, loads and runs the kernel. Instead the secondary
bootstap would load the tertiary bootstrap (or perhaps one of many
tertiary bootstraps) pass it the necessary parameters, and the
tertiary bootstrap would take it from there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Withrow, Tel: +1 617 598 4480, Fax: +1 617 598 4430 Net: witr@rwwa.COM
R.W. Withrow Associates, 319 Lynnway Suite 201, Lynn MA 01901 USA
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