On Sunday 24 February 2008 13:01, Vegard Nossum wrote: > I have a question/comment regarding the Multiboot Specification. Since > loaders need to read/load an object file anyway, wouldn't it be more > appropriate to look for the multiboot header by looking up either a > symbol name or a section name, rather than searching for a magic > number within the first 8K bytes of the image?
No, because of the so-called a.out kludge. Since there are many (minor) executable formats in this world, it is crucial to provide a format-independent way in the Multiboot Speicification. > This shouldn't be very difficult to implement for loaders, it would > make loading safer (more reliable), and it would remove an otherwise > artificial limitation. (It wouldn't have to be a requirement, but it > could be a supplement to the magic number solution.) > > How would I proceed to suggest this change? :-) Unless you have a convincing argument for the change, I wouldn't accept it. All I can think of is about how to support IA-64. But my knowledge on IA-64 is too limited, so I cannot make a good decision about it by myself. Okuji _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
