On 20 Jun 2001, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Ron what I would do is start with my network boot client, as a
> starting point for small code. I can use my own extremly minimal
> libc or uclibc. Using uclibc is where I want to go long term.
I am trying your nbc stuff and it is amazing. 16KB ramdisk for the whole
works. Hard to beat!
I am extending it so it will boot local files, and let you mount the disk.
I may put a some simple commands in there to make it easy to pick a
kernel. I've always wanted this.
I am experimenting by putting the test /sbin /dev /proc etc. on my user
partition, and then using my 'boot options in kernel' to boot that
partition.
Anyway I think we can go this route: boot linux, user types in an option,
kernel then puts the ramdisk in memory and boots /sbin/nbc from it, then
we boot arbitrary kernels from disk or net.
Right now the 'type in an option' is a 5-second delay (based on jiffies)
that calls do_poll() to see if a CR was typed (that's all you can really
poll for in cooked mode). If so it reads a line. If I type
root=/dev/hda5
it boots to my /usr and runs your nbc code.
Eric the beauty of your approach is I can test all this stuff after
booting, since it's a user program! I love it!
what's the latest kernel that kexec works on? I forget ...
Thanks
ron
