From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Feb 7 14:55:03 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA18417 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 7 Feb 1998 14:55:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (dingo.cdrom.com [204.216.28.145]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA18409 for ; Sat, 7 Feb 1998 14:54:59 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA07140 for ; Sat, 7 Feb 1998 14:54:56 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802072254.OAA07140@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Bootblock sizes (was bad144 ravings) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 14:54:53 -0800 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" Ok, just to put some perspective on things, so that people understand the situation. The issue at hand here is the size of the 'boot2' file, which may not exceed 14 sectors @ 512B each (in order to fit on a 15spt disk), or 7168 bytes. Let us look at some sizes (in bytes). The 'Bare' bootblock has serial console support, but nothing else fancy. Config Size Feature bulk ------ ---- ------------ Bare 6560 0 (room for 608 bytes) With bad144 7104 544 With extras 6640 80 With splash + extras 6768 208 (80 + 128) With VESA 6624 64 With NAMEBLOCK 6640 80 With NAMEBLOCK and NAMEBLOCK_WRITEBACK 6640 80 The 'extras' feature allows arbitrary loading of extra items which can be recovered later within the kernel. You can use this for PnP tables, userconfig scripts, whatever. NAMEBLOCK and VESA are features really of interest only to specific users; they're listed here just for interest's sake. No conclusions here, this is just for information's sake. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com