Quoting "Eric W. Biederman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Please tell me what is wrong with ELF header as the special header
> header. I didn't pick it because the standard tools use it. But
> instead because it is multiple platform, multi os, and darn trivial.
>
Nothing at all! The setup I'm working on replaces fill_inbuf with a pointer. The
init code to boot using a particular method sets the pointer to an appropriate
function.
It doesn't matter to my code if you call elfboot or gunzip after that.
The table in the IDE exists so that a boot partition can hold 2 versions of the
kernel so that a failsafe can be implemented. The idea there is to set a value
in CMOS and a watchdog timer before booting the kernel. If the boot fails, it
will automatically boot the failsafe kernel instead.
The table takes up an entire block just to keep things simple.
> I already support command lines, ramdisks, and initrd's with
> mkelfImage.
>
> I already support loading memtest86, etherboot, and linux directly.
> And to some extent I already support alpha.
>
> I also already have code that adds a self decompressor to ELF images,
> that works on both x86 and alpha.
>
> I can boot these images directly from the linux kernel of from
> linuxbios.
>
> The only part that I haven't completed is a set of standard tables to
> replace the ACPI, and irq routing tables. Maybe I'll get there maybe
> not but presenting a standard interface should be much less work in
> the long run.
>
> > I expect to have it all together either tomorrow or early next week
> (testing
> > today). It has actually worked already, but without cleanup and
> organization,
> > the multiple boot methods in my tree were threatening to become a
> > hairball.
>
> I'm going to be gone for the first two weeks in July so I won't be
> able to defend this code much
>
> Eric
>
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