From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Sep 24 21:39:48 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA24917 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Thu, 24 Sep 1998 21:39:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from labinfo.iet.unipi.it (labinfo.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id VAA24911 for ; Thu, 24 Sep 1998 21:39:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it) Received: from localhost (luigi@localhost) by labinfo.iet.unipi.it (8.6.5/8.6.5) id EAA11481; Fri, 25 Sep 1998 04:51:26 +0200 From: Luigi Rizzo Message-Id: <199809250251.EAA11481@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Subject: Re: Booting from NT ? To: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert) Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 04:51:26 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: drussell@saturn-tech.com, tlambert@primenet.com, jflowers@ezo.net, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199809242234.PAA10700@usr02.primenet.com> from "Terry Lambert" at Sep 24, 98 10:34:32 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > The idea would be have the boot block (512 bytes) locate and suck in a > > predefined file using BIOS calls, so the only problem would be to find > > out the parameters to pass to the bios. > > A better way would be to modify the FreeBSD boot blocks to read > NTFS instead of UFS. which is essentially what i meant above -- just with the simplification that i only wanted to look in the root directory etc. > Note that the use of the NT boot loader simplifies this, since it can > have a very large boot image that it loads from (see the handbook). i wonder just how large... because if it can contain a full kernel one can simply construct a boot made by a small relocator and a regular kernel. > The real pain here is that FreeBSD won't boot on a pure read-only > file store without modification (the existance of which was posted > about several times by the ROM/FLASH people). uh ? booting the kernel obviously works because i have done it reading from a CD or the network -- and a readonly root also seems to work, because I have been using diskless with a readonly root for a long time. I know that mounting a UFS from a readonly media recently seems not to work (but in 2.2.1 times i managed to dump a UFS partition to a CD and was also able to mount the CD as UFS and read from it) cheers luigi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message