From owner-freebsd-current  Fri Jun  9 16:59:16 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Received: from cypherpunks.ai (cypherpunks.ai [209.88.68.47])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id 87DEC37C256; Fri,  9 Jun 2000 16:59:13 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from jeroen@vangelderen.org)
Received: from vangelderen.org (grolsch.ai [209.88.68.214])
	by cypherpunks.ai (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id D34384F; Fri,  9 Jun 2000 19:59:12 -0400 (AST)
Message-ID: <394184D0.3B7479F2@vangelderen.org>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 19:59:12 -0400
From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" <jeroen@vangelderen.org>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12 i386)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
Cc: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net>,
	Luoqi Chen <luoqi@watermarkgroup.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG,
	emulation@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: VMware detection code in boot loader
References: <20000609215641.B13911CE1@overcee.netplex.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

Peter Wemm wrote:
> 
> Christopher Masto wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 01:14:35PM -0400, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote:
> > > I'm not sure it is a good idea to name this variable VMWare as
> > > that is implementation specific. It may be better to have a var
> > > named 'emulation' set to 'none' or 'vmware' or 'bochs' or ...
> >
> > Mmm.. or, giving forth the ability to do in/out instructions, so the
> > non-generic code would be entirely in the add-on forth piece.  I'm
> > not sure if there are any security implications there.. at boot time
> > the machine is essentially as single-user as it's ever going to be.
> 
> I prefer 'emulation' being set to 'native', 'vmware' etc.  Consider that
> there is IA64, Alpha, sparc, ppc etc to deal with.  Teaching the ficl
> scripts to do inb/outb would be bad.  It would be much better to have a
> generic mechanism for informing the loader about possible emulation
> environments, eg you are using the IA64 emulator under an x86 box, or an
> x86 emulator on an Alpha, or an Alpha SIMOS emulation under x86, or
> whatever.

Rethinking, emulation may not be the best suggestion. People
might confuse it with Linux emulation. How about 'hardware' ?
or 'platform' or <your suggestion here> ?

Cheers,
Jeroen
-- 
Jeroen C. van Gelderen          o      _     _         _
jeroen@vangelderen.org  _o     /\_   _ \\o  (_)\__/o  (_)
                      _< \_   _>(_) (_)/<_    \_| \   _|/' \/
                     (_)>(_) (_)        (_)   (_)    (_)'  _\o_


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message