From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 8 22:44:00 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB3AF106564A; Thu, 8 Sep 2011 22:44:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from grehan@freebsd.org) Received: from alto.onthenet.com.au (alto.OntheNet.com.au [203.13.68.12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 996E48FC15; Thu, 8 Sep 2011 22:44:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from dommail.onthenet.com.au (dommail.OntheNet.com.au [203.13.70.57]) by alto.onthenet.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 98341116AC; Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:25:26 +1000 (EST) Received: from vpn2ntap-47744.hq.netapp.com (pos-ext.netapp.com [198.95.226.40]) by dommail.onthenet.com.au (MOS 4.1.10-GA) with ESMTP id AYE93285 (AUTH peterg@ptree32.com.au); Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:25:25 +1000 Message-ID: <4E6940D3.4070801@freebsd.org> Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:25:23 -0600 From: Peter Grehan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.21) Gecko/20110830 Thunderbird/3.1.13 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrew Duane References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" , "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Soliciting opinions on an extension of the bootinfo structure X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:44:01 -0000 > I'm proposing an extension framework for the bootinfo structure used > to pass information from the bootstrap/loader to the kernel. Although > I'm only proposing this for the MIPS bootinfo, it's completely > applicable to any of them. > > What I propose is adding an optional platform extension structure: > bootinfo_pext, surrounded by #ifdef BOOTINFO_PEXT Any reason not to put the vendor bits into another piece of loader metadata ? That seems the extensible way to add additional info from the loader, rather than extending bootinfo (as was the case pre-loader days). later, Peter.