Jeff Garzik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Cygnus/Redhat's RedBoot might serve as a good beginning to elfBIOS.

Another alternative is to play with is OSKit.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/

It doesn't go as small as etherboot, but it does provide
a crude framework for reusing kernel drivers.  But it
seems to get that part right unlike MILO.   Not that
either of them have really advanced past 2.2...

The biggest problem with oskit are:
1) It's configuration options are lacking so it is hard
   to not compile in every driver under the sun.

   Earlier today I played with oskit's netboot bootloader.  When I
   started it was sitting at about 300KB with just the eepr100
   driver compiled in.  But this also included all of the ide and
   scsi drivers!  I played around as a proof of concept and got a
   build without any drivers at 100KB.  

   And of course there is still the option of compression which
   got my proof of concept down to 36KB.  So it looks like
   the size problem can be overcome.

2) It's linux drivers are only current as of 2.2.12
   The 2.4.x everything as a module would probably be a big help
   in being able to compile drivers out.

3) The last release was a year ago.

The big advantage is that when you don't have a small custom 
driver you can just reuse the linux one.  Which might be good
for handling the development time versus code size tradeoff.

Eric

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