On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 10:52:46AM -0700, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Eric Seppanen wrote:
>
> > Another idea: linuxbios, as it starts, stores a magic value somewhere
> > (say, in CMOS ram) that basically says "I'm booting with agressive
> > settings". Then, when linux hits runlevel 3, you have a userspace app go
> > and erase that magic value.
>
> We seem to be in agreement ... I think we're out of email sync :=) See my
> other note on CMOS.
>
> > Then, if a system ever fails to boot with agressive settings, you could
> > simply power-cycle (or reset the box in any way) and when linuxbios boots
> > it can see that the magic value is already present, and knows the previous
> > boot must have failed... therefore it uses the safe settings.
>
> I like this.
>
OK, I didn't see that in your cmos message.
Basically, I'm not against fail-safe booting under network control, but I
don't see the value in changing basic architectures to accomodate it (like
changing settings from userspace).
The "magic value in cmos" idea seems *much* more appealing to me, since
very little userspace work is required, and because it avoids the scary
fiddling of settings in a running system.
If you really want to be friendly to bare-bones embedded or thin-client
systems, you could even make the fail-safe vs. agressive stuff able to be
compiled out, because it's conceivable that an embedded board might not
have battery-backed cmos ram-- I don't.
Eric
