From: Olivier Galibert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: initial grub menu over ethernet
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 19:18:38 -0400
> Doable without direct support in grub, but a pain. Not doable if I go
> around implementing my "serverboot shouldn't have to worry about
> filesystems, grub already knows them" idea.
That's wrong. The El Torito specifies that a boot CD-ROM looks like
just a floppy or a hard disk via BIOS, so you don't need any CD-ROM
driver which accesses to IDE or SCSI directly. If your BIOS can't boot
CD-ROM, you can copy the boot initial image to a floppy. The size of a
floppy is very small but it is large enough to start up a GNU/Hurd
system (once Hurd discards serverboot).
> Okuji, do you plan to track the file organization of etherboot, or
> would you accept a seperation in directories between network devices
> and protocols and an independant eveolution as a result. For
> instance, I want NFS, but I also want mountpoint and filename
> completion over NFS, so etherboot's code isn't enough.
That's mostly ok, as long as we can continue to use the device
drivers without lots of modification. But "mountpoint" is not
acceptable in the current semantics of GRUB.
Anyway, you haven't answered my question, "why one exception is good
but two exceptions are bad?". IMO, any clear criterion like Pavel's is
impossible actually. When one asks, "Will foo be included in GNU GRUB?
Is that possible?", we always need to consider the answer
individually. Suppose that "foo" will certainly be very useful once it
is implemented, but nobody can implement it (e.g. due to lack of the
time or the technical knowledge). The situtation is that "foo" should
be included but that's impossible. Likewise, suppose that "foo" can be
implemented, but nobody can maintain it. In this case, I would say,
"Don't add foo into GNU GRUB! Who will take care of it?".
As my conclusion, because GNU GRUB is not a vaporware but a
practical tool, we may not judge if a thing should integrated with GNU
GRUB, only based on a theoretical analysis. We should maintain a good
balance among "man power", "time", "usefulness", "maintainability",
and so on. In other words, it is acceptable to add numerous device
drivers, if someone can maintain and develop them.
Okuji
