On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefa...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Christian Helmuth > <christian.helm...@genode-labs.com> wrote: >> I wonder why the image names in gPXE are limited to 16 characters in >> include/gpxe/image.h while the command-line buffer is dynamically >> allocated. That's real downer as apart from that gPXE does a great >> job in our multiboot environment (after bumping MAX_MODULES to 32). > > CCed Andrei who is currently working on multiboot improvements. > > The 16 character limit is also an issue for Solaris multiboot. What > are you booting? Care to share your config? > > In general there is nothing stopping contributions that eliminate > limitations such as these. There is a code size and memory footprint > constraint on gPXE which can present a challenge. Sometimes this > explains why the limitations exist. If you want to work on patches > that would be great. > > Andrei: Any thoughts? > > Stefan >
I remember asking myself the exact question when I started digging through the image related code but I dismissed it as probably being related to the desire of keeping things simple. Stefan, you've mentioned Solaris, which I am not familiar with. Are Solaris image/module names unusually long? Dinamically allocating the image name would definitely solve any issues of this sort. Taking a quick look at the code that directly interacts with the name field, one has to be careful since a dynamically allocated field would trigger changes in places where sizeof(image->name) is used. I'll also have to check multiboot to see if it imposes some limits on image/module names. Ofc, I'll have to take a more detailed look than just grep image-\>name :) I think I'll try my hand at a patch tomorrow where the image name is dynamically allocated and see how much this adds to code size and memory footprint. Then again, if more people want to do this then that would be great. -- Andrei Faur _______________________________________________ gPXE mailing list gPXE@etherboot.org http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe
