Date: 03 Dec 1998 16:12:39 -0600 From: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org> To: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> Cc: mike@smith.net.au, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, Marius.Bendiksen@scancall.no, hsw@email.generalresources.com, hsw@acm.org, abial@nask.pl, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /boot/loader what to set rootdev to? Message-ID: <86af14vprc.fsf@detlev.UUCP> In-Reply-To: Robert Nordier's message of "Thu, 3 Dec 1998 23:27:00 %2B0200 (SAT)" References: <199812032127.XAA18890@ceia.nordier.com>
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>>> As you go on to describe, it is *not* particularly difficult to >>> boot FreeBSD straight out of Windows. >> I want to make one point clear: the process *does* have an intervening >> reboot between when Windows is loaded and when FreeBSD is loaded. > OK. Booting out of Windows into a carefully prepared and disinfected > DOS session has a chance of coming tolerably close to resembling a > cold boot: at least with kernel vm86 usage as it is at the moment. Okay. I'm still trying to understand the differences at that point. > But if one is exiting Windows in order to load FreeBSD, why boot > into DOS anyway? (It's kind of like going to wash your hands before > dinner, but then stopping off for a pee on your way back to the > table.) In the past, there were cards that required initialization by DOS device drivers. For instance, a card which would emulate a Sound Blaster, but only if a DOS driver configured it for that. I seem to recall reading this and a few other situations in which FBSDBOOT was required in the past. Is this no longer valid? > I'm certainly not intending to knock anyone's interest in doing > this. There appears to be a notable call for booting from Win95 into FreeBSD. I don't personally care how it's done, but if FBSDBOOT works for the vast majority, I didn't see any reason to write something new. However, you have been saying that this will not work. I believe you, but also want to know why and where it fails, and why it works on the system I tested it on. In the archives, I couldn't find anything that didn't point to HIMEM. > But to me, (like the hand-washing rule) looking for ways around the > cold boot rule verges on the perverse. I'm not particularly interested in looking for ways around it. I'm trying to figure out why it exists. You may also note that I have started asking about nextboot, and if I could write an app to use its system. > We already have a similarly-inspired "If you overclock your box, > don't call us" rule. I know. I know why the overclock rule exists. I don't know why the cold boot rule exists. > To me, commonsense just says no. And I'm not trying to convert > anyone else to that opinion: it's why I don't want to even *think* > about this stuff any more. :-) Okay. If you feel it necessary to drop this thread, go ahead. If you can explain the cold boot rule's reasoning to me, even better. If you (or Mike or anybody) can tell me whether nextboot still works, terrific. Happy hacking, joelh -- Joel Ray Holveck - joelh@gnu.org Fourth law of programming: Anything that can go wrong wi sendmail: segmentation violation - core dumped To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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