Darren Reed wrote: > Build mechanics: > - When provided with a list of known PCI device IDs, be able to > deliver a "kernel" with only the required drivers > - For non-hardware devices, use some sort of configuration file to > define which features are to be included > I had a look at OpenSolaris boot with a view to considering whether I could use it as a PXE-booted diskless kernel.
I know how to make such a thing with Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD - there is a reasonable body of documentation available for init and the rc processing and what needs to be in the ramdisk and how to switch root. But the Solaris boot process is really quite different. Perhaps you would get furtherst, fastest, by concentrating not on creating a minimal boot image, but on documenting what all the dependencies and mechanisms are, and compare/contrast with these other systems that are already in use in this space. Moinak clearly understood all this and his CD boot optimisations are great. Its just a bit too much like magic for those of us coming from elsewhere. And yes, it would be nice to know what limitations there are on things like swapless operation, or swap over NFS, or swap over iSCSI. Its less important for embedded, but this technology also has application in HPC and netbooting compute resources. James
