jdd wrote:
>
> Steve Pauly wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, zentara wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Steve Pauly wrote:
> > >
> > > > With all the traffic on the list about kernels, I thought this might be
> > > > interesting.
> > > > He states that the popular dists ship adequate kernels and the desire to
> > > > recompile for speed is useless. Since modern pc's ship with 32MB or more
> > > > Ram, modularizing is meaningless, he adds.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Well modularization is now neccessary for most systems.
> >
> > Agreed. Please read the article to see why most people will not need to
> > recompile.
> >
> > > Have you noticed how many people complain about the
> > > error message "kernel too big" ?
> >
> > I thought the issue about big kernels mainly revolved around "make zImage"
> > vs. "make bzImage". The times zImage didn't work, bzImage cured it, in my
> > experience.
> >
> > >
> > > I think Hubert has said that the kernel must be able to boot
> > > within the old 640k dos limit.
> >
>
> I once read that Linus fooled the pc bios by making the kernel an image
> of a bootable floppy. If it's right, the kernel image can't be more than
> 1.44Mo (may be 2.88 on some bioses).
Close... Attached is a copy of boot.s from the linux-0.1 kernel! Read
what Linus has to say about it...
|
| boot.s
|
| boot.s is loaded at 0x7c00 by the bios-startup routines, and moves itself
| out of the way to address 0x90000, and jumps there.
|
| It then loads the system at 0x10000, using BIOS interrupts. Thereafter
| it disables all interrupts, moves the system down to 0x0000, changes
| to protected mode, and calls the start of system. System then must
| RE-initialize the protected mode in it's own tables, and enable
| interrupts as needed.
|
| NOTE! currently system is at most 8*65536 bytes long. This should be no
| problem, even in the future. I want to keep it simple. This 512 kB
| kernel size should be enough - in fact more would mean we'd have to move
| not just these start-up routines, but also do something about the cache-
| memory (block IO devices). The area left over in the lower 640 kB is meant
| for these. No other memory is assumed to be "physical", ie all memory
| over 1Mb is demand-paging. All addresses under 1Mb are guaranteed to match
| their physical addresses.
|
| NOTE1 abouve is no longer valid in it's entirety. cache-memory is allocated
| above the 1Mb mark as well as below. Otherwise it is mainly correct.
|
| NOTE 2! The boot disk type must be set at compile-time, by setting
| the following equ. Having the boot-up procedure hunt for the right
| disk type is severe brain-damage.
| The loader has been made as simple as possible (had to, to get it
| in 512 bytes with the code to move to protected mode), and continuos
| read errors will result in a unbreakable loop. Reboot by hand. It
| loads pretty fast by getting whole sectors at a time whenever possible.
| 1.44Mb disks:
sectors = 18
| 1.2Mb disks:
| sectors = 15
| 720kB disks:
| sectors = 9
.globl begtext, begdata, begbss, endtext, enddata, endbss
.text
begtext:
.data
begdata:
.bss
begbss:
.text
BOOTSEG = 0x07c0
INITSEG = 0x9000
SYSSEG = 0x1000 | system loaded at 0x10000 (65536).
ENDSEG = SYSSEG + SYSSIZE
entry start
start:
mov ax,#BOOTSEG
mov ds,ax
mov ax,#INITSEG
mov es,ax
mov cx,#256
sub si,si
sub di,di
rep
movw
jmpi go,INITSEG
go: mov ax,cs
mov ds,ax
mov es,ax
mov ss,ax
mov sp,#0x400 | arbitrary value >>512
mov ah,#0x03 | read cursor pos
xor bh,bh
int 0x10
mov cx,#24
mov bx,#0x0007 | page 0, attribute 7 (normal)
mov bp,#msg1
mov ax,#0x1301 | write string, move cursor
int 0x10
| ok, we've written the message, now
| we want to load the system (at 0x10000)
mov ax,#SYSSEG
mov es,ax | segment of 0x010000
call read_it
call kill_motor
| if the read went well we get current cursor position ans save it for
| posterity.
mov ah,#0x03 | read cursor pos
xor bh,bh
int 0x10 | save it in known place, con_init fetches
mov [510],dx | it from 0x90510.
| now we want to move to protected mode ...
cli | no interrupts allowed !
| first we move the system to it's rightful place
mov ax,#0x0000
cld | 'direction'=0, movs moves forward
do_move:
mov es,ax | destination segment
add ax,#0x1000
cmp ax,#0x9000
jz end_move
mov ds,ax | source segment
sub di,di
sub si,si
mov cx,#0x8000
rep
movsw
j do_move
| then we load the segment descriptors
end_move:
mov ax,cs | right, forgot this at first. didn't work :-)
mov ds,ax
lidt idt_48 | load idt with 0,0
lgdt gdt_48 | load gdt with whatever appropriate
| that was painless, now we enable A20
call empty_8042
mov al,#0xD1 | command write
out #0x64,al
call empty_8042
mov al,#0xDF | A20 on
out #0x60,al
call empty_8042
| well, that went ok, I hope. Now we have to reprogram the interrupts :-(
| we put them right after the intel-reserved hardware interrupts, at
| int 0x20-0x2F. There they won't mess up anything. Sadly IBM really
| messed this up with the original PC, and they haven't been able to
| rectify it afterwards. Thus the bios puts interrupts at 0x08-0x0f,
| which is used for the internal hardware interrupts as well. We just
| have to reprogram the 8259's, and it isn't fun.
mov al,#0x11 | initialization sequence
out #0x20,al | send it to 8259A-1
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb | jmp $+2, jmp $+2
out #0xA0,al | and to 8259A-2
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0x20 | start of hardware int's (0x20)
out #0x21,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0x28 | start of hardware int's 2 (0x28)
out #0xA1,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0x04 | 8259-1 is master
out #0x21,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0x02 | 8259-2 is slave
out #0xA1,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0x01 | 8086 mode for both
out #0x21,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
out #0xA1,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
mov al,#0xFF | mask off all interrupts for now
out #0x21,al
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
out #0xA1,al
| well, that certainly wasn't fun :-(. Hopefully it works, and we don't
| need no steenking BIOS anyway (except for the initial loading :-).
| The BIOS-routine wants lots of unnecessary data, and it's less
| "interesting" anyway. This is how REAL programmers do it.
|
| Well, now's the time to actually move into protected mode. To make
| things as simple as possible, we do no register set-up or anything,
| we let the gnu-compiled 32-bit programs do that. We just jump to
| absolute address 0x00000, in 32-bit protected mode.
mov ax,#0x0001 | protected mode (PE) bit
lmsw ax | This is it!
jmpi 0,8 | jmp offset 0 of segment 8 (cs)
| This routine checks that the keyboard command queue is empty
| No timeout is used - if this hangs there is something wrong with
| the machine, and we probably couldn't proceed anyway.
empty_8042:
.word 0x00eb,0x00eb
in al,#0x64 | 8042 status port
test al,#2 | is input buffer full?
jnz empty_8042 | yes - loop
ret
| This routine loads the system at address 0x10000, making sure
| no 64kB boundaries are crossed. We try to load it as fast as
| possible, loading whole tracks whenever we can.
|
| in: es - starting address segment (normally 0x1000)
|
| This routine has to be recompiled to fit another drive type,
| just change the "sectors" variable at the start of the file
| (originally 18, for a 1.44Mb drive)
|
sread: .word 1 | sectors read of current track
head: .word 0 | current head
track: .word 0 | current track
read_it:
mov ax,es
test ax,#0x0fff
die: jne die | es must be at 64kB boundary
xor bx,bx | bx is starting address within segment
rp_read:
mov ax,es
cmp ax,#ENDSEG | have we loaded all yet?
jb ok1_read
ret
ok1_read:
mov ax,#sectors
sub ax,sread
mov cx,ax
shl cx,#9
add cx,bx
jnc ok2_read
je ok2_read
xor ax,ax
sub ax,bx
shr ax,#9
ok2_read:
call read_track
mov cx,ax
add ax,sread
cmp ax,#sectors
jne ok3_read
mov ax,#1
sub ax,head
jne ok4_read
inc track
ok4_read:
mov head,ax
xor ax,ax
ok3_read:
mov sread,ax
shl cx,#9
add bx,cx
jnc rp_read
mov ax,es
add ax,#0x1000
mov es,ax
xor bx,bx
jmp rp_read
read_track:
push ax
push bx
push cx
push dx
mov dx,track
mov cx,sread
inc cx
mov ch,dl
mov dx,head
mov dh,dl
mov dl,#0
and dx,#0x0100
mov ah,#2
int 0x13
jc bad_rt
pop dx
pop cx
pop bx
pop ax
ret
bad_rt: mov ax,#0
mov dx,#0
int 0x13
pop dx
pop cx
pop bx
pop ax
jmp read_track
/*
* This procedure turns off the floppy drive motor, so
* that we enter the kernel in a known state, and
* don't have to worry about it later.
*/
kill_motor:
push dx
mov dx,#0x3f2
mov al,#0
outb
pop dx
ret
gdt:
.word 0,0,0,0 | dummy
.word 0x07FF | 8Mb - limit=2047 (2048*4096=8Mb)
.word 0x0000 | base address=0
.word 0x9A00 | code read/exec
.word 0x00C0 | granularity=4096, 386
.word 0x07FF | 8Mb - limit=2047 (2048*4096=8Mb)
.word 0x0000 | base address=0
.word 0x9200 | data read/write
.word 0x00C0 | granularity=4096, 386
idt_48:
.word 0 | idt limit=0
.word 0,0 | idt base=0L
gdt_48:
.word 0x800 | gdt limit=2048, 256 GDT entries
.word gdt,0x9 | gdt base = 0X9xxxx
msg1:
.byte 13,10
.ascii "Loading system ..."
.byte 13,10,13,10
.text
endtext:
.data
enddata:
.bss
endbss:
