From owner-freebsd-current Thu Dec 4 23:52:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA28883 for current-outgoing; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 23:52:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current) Received: from godzilla.zeta.org.au (godzilla.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.19]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA28837 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 1997 23:51:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bde@zeta.org.au) Received: (from bde@localhost) by godzilla.zeta.org.au (8.8.7/8.6.9) id SAA23963; Fri, 5 Dec 1997 18:46:25 +1100 Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 18:46:25 +1100 From: Bruce Evans Message-Id: <199712050746.SAA23963@godzilla.zeta.org.au> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com, sos@FreeBSD.dk Subject: Re: 3.0 -release ? Cc: dg@root.com, FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.ORG, regnauld@deepo.prosa.dk Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >> Well, we (John P, Peter, myself) have had ELF running on our test >> systems for quite some time now, the userland stuff is all there >> (give or take). Its possible to boot an ELF kernel, but we need >> to do some serious work on the bootblocks if they are going to >> support BOTH a.out & ELF. > >Well, what does Bruce have to say about this? [All eyes swivel in >the direction of bde :)]. I know very little about ELF. For a.out, the right way to load it is to load the whole kernel file and jump to the address at offset 0 in it (the magic number at this address is of course 0xNNNNNNed to jump over the header). Perhaps the boot loader should initialize paging so that the startup code doesn't need to be written in assembler (to relocate from low physical memory to high virtual memory). Bruce