Peter, I believe we shouldn't put it like "ELF versus Floppy" because these ways are not mutually exclusive: they could be tried in parallel, especially since Rafael's pursuit towards a working solution also involves waiting for helpful replies from the mailing lists ;-) Also, regarding SeaBIOS: I haven't observed any downsides from SeaBIOS providing the BIOS environment. It may be arcane and not modern anough, however it does not prevent anything from working: it either helps something to work (e.g. some wonderful floppy-based OS which relies on the BIOS calls) or simply being inactive if the OS is not using this environment.
On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 3:12 PM Peter Stuge <pe...@stuge.se> wrote: > > Rafael Send wrote: > > I had already testes the coreboot + Linux kernel without SeaBIOS, > > that works fine. > > That's a great start! So did you look into what happens under the > hood when you do that, to learn? > > The original common case for coreboot payloads was also ELF files, so > there is much overlap with what you want to achieve. > > You probably already noticed the tool mkelfimage in the pages I linked to. > Did you look into what it does, and why it's needed in the first place? > (Hint: Linux is a bit needy.) > > > > But I do want the rest of the boot menu presented by SeaBIOS > > because I usually use Windoze as well. > > SeaBIOS creates a BIOS environment when there isn't one. That is its > key feature. This is a coffin for Windows to lie in. > > BIOS environments are just inadequate in general, and supremely ill > equipped in particular for what you want to accomplish. > > Consider using SeaBIOS exclusively for what it was made; Windows coffin. > > Consider another payload before (time wise) SeaBIOS to provide the menu. > > > > Even if I put the initrd inside the kernel, that can't be loaded by > > SeaBIOS unless the whole thing is an ELF file, right? > > I guess so. > > The true-to-form BIOS way would probably be to put FreeDOS, > loadlin.exe, kernel and initramfs into a disk image. So please don't do > that. If you really want to, please be rational: Ask yourself why you > want to first start the wrong OS in order to then start the right OS. > > > > How would that step go (vmlinuz -> ELF)? > > I'd recommend to study what coreboot does. It's not trivial, but also > not super complicated. The key point is that Linux needs a loader stub > (code and data) to be generated. It's not possible to just jump right > into the kernel and have it start. Unfortunately. > > > //Peter > _______________________________________________ > SeaBIOS mailing list -- seabios@seabios.org > To unsubscribe send an email to seabios-le...@seabios.org _______________________________________________ SeaBIOS mailing list -- seabios@seabios.org To unsubscribe send an email to seabios-le...@seabios.org
