Hi,
the multiboot specs and their implementation in grub and kvm are nice
for anyone playing at writing their own little kernel. The bootloader
take care of all the ugly details of getting from the bootsector and
16bit mode to a running 32bit mode which is great. The kernel can start
right up doing real work.
But here is the problem: Most systems nowadays support 64bit, most
kernel support 64bit, people have >4GB ram and (most importantly :) I
want to play in 64bit.
That means before I can play with my kernel I first need to write a mini
bootloader that switches from 32bit mode to 64bit mode and then starts
my kernel. For comfort the mini bootloader should be able to parse a.out
or elf, do relocations and all that stuff grub/kvm does for 32bit
already.
So here is my feature request:
Please extend the multiarch specs to include a 64bit mode.
Please add support in grub for elf64-x86_64 binaries.
This could be as simple as adding a new bit in the multiboot header
flags while keepping all data structures as is. The kernel would then
have to be located in the lower 4GB of ram to be able to fit in the
32bit *_addr (if that is used) and grub would call entry_addr in 64bit
mode.
Or a new multiboot magic could be defined with new data structures
allowing for kernel and modules to be loaded beyond 4GB. But that is
probably not neccessary.
Comments?
MfG
Goswin
_______________________________________________
Grub-devel mailing list
Grub-devel@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
