Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 02:46:45 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: question about boot loaders Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.991209024113.26554D-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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The documentation in /usr/src/sys/boot/i386 seems a little scant, and that still hanging out in /usr/src/sys/i386/boot is clearly outdated. Was wondering if someone could point me at docs, and/or post a short summary something in the form of: loader loadedby function -------------------------------- mbr BIOS whatever, maybe a couple of lines boot0 ??? "" ""... boot1 ??? "" ""... boot2 boot1 FreeBSD bootloader that speaks protected mode, etc, and can load the kernel around gaps in physical memory, etc. loader boot2 Forth interpreter + scripting for great fun kernel loader or boot2 The kernel Once we get into boot2 land, I recognize the FreeBSD-specific loading code, etc. What I don't know much about is those first three 512-byte chunks of code. Boot0 appears to be booteasy, but given some ignorance about the i386 boot process, I'm not sure whether it's loaded by mbr, or by the bios, and where it lives partition-wise. Similarly, how boot1 fits into it the whole scheme--I assume this is FreeBSD-specific as it knows about boot2, but don't know where it lives, etc. Preferably, afterwards, also drop the results into sys/boot/i386/README. :-) Thanks, Robert N M Watson robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1 TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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