On Fri, 2003-12-19 at 00:36, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > Brainstorming earlier today I think I have found a way to use > an linux kernel for the boot loader and to implement pcbios > compatibility without too much cost. The idea is to use > a uclinux kernel. And implement a ``user space'' aplication > that is a user space shim that makes kernel calls. > > There are a few nasty details to work out like how to handle > services that are expected to work in vm86 mode. But I'm > not certain I care. > > Other thoughts?
Curse you, Eric, this was my idea. :) But I approached it from a different angle. Getting Etherboot (the driver library and higher level code) to export PXE - effectively Intel's retrofit of networking code into the legacy BIOS - is similar to exporting LinuxBIOS's hardware initialisation library and a non-trivial OS via PC BIOS services. If VMWare, bochs or whatever can do it as a user space process, then it can be done all of a pece in firmware, right? [For those of you not on etherboot-developers, I've waved my arms about recently at Eric, Ken Yap and others about how to resurrect the PXE code in Etherboot]. And yes, the "interesting" stuff is how to switch modes as appropriate and to sort out how to organise memory without frightening the horses. I'm on a very steep learning curve. And on the bottom of it, frankly. The only difference between us is that I was thinking of building this on eCos, not uclinux. eCos is designed to minimally load only those bits of functionality needed. I don't think this affects the basic idea. _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
