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Date:      Tue, 13 Jun 2000 11:51:04 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org>
To:        Luoqi Chen <luoqi@watermarkgroup.com>
Cc:        msmith@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: VMware detection code in boot loader 
Message-ID:  <200006131851.LAA22933@mass.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:53:39 EDT." <200006131753.e5DHrdi06492@lor.watermarkgroup.com> 

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> > > a larger issue. It is not the loader's job to detect the underlying
> > > hardware configuration.
> > 
> > Actually, in a broad fashion, it _is_.  This is why the loader 
> > understands PCI and PnP, for example.
> > 
> Why do we want to do that? Are we going to offload device probe routines to
> the loader? I thought the loader only needs to understand bootable devices,
> and it's the kernel's responsibility to handle the rest.

It's hard to decide where to draw the line, and hard to decide what is or 
isn't part of the boot path.  The simplest answer is just to have the 
loader load drivers for everything that it can find, which is the path 
that we've been walking down.

-- 
\\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
\\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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