From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 1 13:41:45 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Delivered-To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4366316A422 for ; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:41:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from olli@lurza.secnetix.de) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (lurza.secnetix.de [83.120.8.8]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9577143D4C for ; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:41:44 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from olli@lurza.secnetix.de) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (xydilc@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k11DfbXP008942 for ; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:41:43 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from oliver.fromme@secnetix.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.13.4/8.13.1/Submit) id k11Dfbq1008941; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:41:37 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from olli) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:41:37 +0100 (CET) Message-Id: <200602011341.k11Dfbq1008941@lurza.secnetix.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <43DFB1DC.2020001@elischer.org> X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-current User-Agent: tin/1.8.0-20051224 ("Ronay") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.11-STABLE (i386)) X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.1.2 (lurza.secnetix.de [127.0.0.1]); Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:41:43 +0100 (CET) X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:48:37 +0000 Cc: Subject: nextboot (was Re: boot block differences between 4.x and 6.x ?) X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:41:45 -0000 Julian Elischer wrote: > Oliver Fromme wrote: > > [...] > > I think the most visible changes in the boot blocks was > > UFS2 support and the removal of nextboot(8) support. > > which I hope to put back because we continue to need it. I agree that it's needed. It's a very useful feature. > (The new nextboot being dependent on the root filesystem still being ok > which is unacceptable to most embedded devices I've worked on, and why > we still use the old bootblocks on all systems shipped.). >From my point of view, the biggest problem with the old nextboot was the fact that it ignored loader(8) and tried to load the kernel directly. While that might work under certain conditions, it's not good in general. Therefore I think that a new nextboot implementation should be implemented in loader itself. Since loader(8) doesn't (and shouldn't) support writing to UFS2, the state information should be written to an unused area in block 2 on the disk, or something similar. In fact, one byte is sufficient: It can be used as an index into a table (ASCII text file), e.g. /boot/nextboot.conf. Would that be feasible to implement? Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "It combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript." -- Jamie Zawinski, when asked: "What's wrong with perl?"