Hi, i wrote: > > Awaiting your results and Andrei's opinion. > > [about MBR dummy partition with boot flag]
Andrei Borzenkov: > TBH I think that the best would be generic support for partition table > manipulation The more generic it is, the more complicated it is to coordinate with the various use case specific automats. I am slowly working towards the building stones for implementing a language that describes System Area (the first 16 blocks of the ISO) and El Torito. It must enable the user to express all appropriate wishes, and it must be suitable for the command line. I will ponder whether i can already define the subset of that language which is needed to implement the use case of synthetic partition table. There are already two more or less failed attempts of such a language: - The mkisofs option interface as used by grub-mkrescue and most other boot image producers. - The xorriso command -boot_image which can express everything that the mkisofs options can. Just more verbous. The intended structure of specialization on particular boot loaders did not pay off. The moving target turned out to be not new boot loaders but old and new boot firmwares. Both suffer from being designed mainly for El Torito and opaque blobs for the System Area. Weaving a net of boot sectors and partition tables has added spaghetti noodle by spaghetti noodle. There is a classic monument for all programmers who fell victim to such a design hairball: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg The movements of boot firmware seems to slow down. It is about time to re-model. Language design is not really my thing, though. > It could be modeled after boot support, "Boot support". Is that a particular technical term ? https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Filesystem.html#Filesystem ? I could compile a substantial list of contraints and examples for the model which shall cover all boot firmware aspects of an ISO. If anybody is interested ... just ask. Have a nice day :) Thomas _______________________________________________ Bug-grub mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub
