From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 10 19:23:11 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F908106566B for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:23:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) Received: from speedfactory.net (mail.speedfactory.net [66.23.216.219]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C56368FC15 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:23:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) Received: from server.baldwin.cx (unverified [66.23.211.162]) by speedfactory.net (SurgeMail 3.8s) with ESMTP id 234979258-1834499 for multiple; Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:24:39 -0400 Received: from localhost.corp.yahoo.com (john@localhost [127.0.0.1]) (authenticated bits=0) by server.baldwin.cx (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m2AJMvTW088673; Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:22:57 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) From: John Baldwin To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:08:42 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <200803061742.34291.vincent@netaktiv.com> <47D1C705.5030604@andric.com> <20080307234004.GA47764@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <20080307234004.GA47764@eos.sc1.parodius.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200803101508.43299.jhb@freebsd.org> X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH authentication, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.0.2 (server.baldwin.cx [127.0.0.1]); Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:23:00 -0400 (EDT) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.91.2/6192/Mon Mar 10 10:54:00 2008 on server.baldwin.cx X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.4 required=4.2 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.1.3 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on server.baldwin.cx Cc: Vincent Mialon , tech@gitoyen.net, Jeremy Chadwick , Dimitry Andric Subject: Re: BTX on USB pen drive X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:23:11 -0000 On Friday 07 March 2008 06:40:04 pm Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 11:51:49PM +0100, Dimitry Andric wrote: > > On 2008-03-07 15:13, John Baldwin wrote: > > > Try this instead: > > > > > > http://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/patches/btx_real.patch > > > > Hi John, > > > > I've encounted way too many machines already with BIOSes that clash with > > the regular btx loader... :( > > Have we considered sgetting rid of BTX and using a different bootloader > altogether on FreeBSD? There's got to be some open-source, non-GPL > bootloaders which work better than our current. > > The reason I mention this is because the number of problem reports with > BTX continue to rise, and debugging them is very painful since due to > the way the crash is reported, no one can easily report a full register > dump. I suppose if the latter was addressed, the former could be solved > quicker. BTX is actually quite small. BTX is just a small kernel that lets us write /boot/loader (and all of libstand) in C w/o worrying about real mode segmentation, etc. In one sense this patch _does_ get rid of BTX in that it now runs the BIOS in real mode rather than virtual 86 mode. -- John Baldwin