On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Gilbert Carl Herschberger II wrote:
>At 05:29 PM 6/10/00 -0400, "Todd L. Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> BTW -- if people are having problems booting JOS, I can post the
>>(GRUB) (floppy) disk image I use somewhere. (I was going to mention this
>>earlier, but forgot about it.)
>
>If we're serious about creating a Java-based operating system, a Java
>application should be able to create a boot diskette. This is on my wish
>list. Any volunteers?
This is a great idea! It shouldn't be so dificult to do that. Can someone
show a bootstring, that boots and say Hello? That should be a beginning,
and maybe a could write something like this. The only problem is: who does
GRUB works? I downloaded the GRUBd distribution, but have no idea how it
works, and how I can make it works. What does it need? A bootloader, then
it probably jumps to a kernel code segment, and this kernel loads some
init-prosses (a command line or so). With JOS, the kernel should load the
JVM, and then comes something from JOSBox (what the hell could be for a
i386 in JOSBox? I know you don't have any example, I know...)
>Here is how it might work. The boot image would be stored within the class
>file itself. This application should be self-contained. It should not use
>an external "resource" file. The raw boot image is converted to a byte
>array, like this:
>
> private byte[] payload = {
> 0x??, 0x??, 0x?? .. 0x??
> };
Doesn't seems dificult. The contents is the bigest problem.
>The Java application opens /dev/fd0 for output and writes the payload byte
>array to the disk. See there! A GRUB boot diskette has been created.
No prob, I thing
>One Java application could create a GRUB boot diskette and a Etherboot boot
>diskette. A command line version might enable me to select GRUB or
>Etherboot. A GUI version of this application might enable me to select
>/dev/fd0 or /def/fd1 and GRUB or Etherboot.
Etherboot is also a mistery for me. 8-(
>Taking this one more step, there should be a suitable API so that any Java
>object can create a boot diskette.
That's rigth. But you need to rewrite this application for every host. So
you should have a main application, and a bunch of classes, each with the
bootstring for a specific host. With the application, you should be able
to choose for wich host you are building the disk.
>How do I create a boot diskette from MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows? I should
>be able to create a boot diskette on any foreign operating system with one
>platform-independent Java application.
See above.
>Does anyone have enough talent (and time) to write this app? It would make
>my life a lot easier. I still don't have a GRUB boot diskette.
I thing this is trivial. Or is it more dificult than I think?
FileOutputStream fos=(/dev/fd0);
Okay, this is not the right syntax, but you know what I mean, doesn't you?
So long
Claudio
--
+-----| http://linux.brasileiro.net - Seu site de informaçġes |-----+
| Claudio Clemens at Home - Informatik - TU-München |
| [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.in.tum.de/~clemens |
I wish I could remember where I parked my hard disk....
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