I've just hacked a little dialog into the kernel, right before mount_root.
Basically it does a chrdev_open of (5,1) (i.e. console). (note you can't
just open "/dev/console" -- no root mounted!)
It then waits 5 seconds for input. The input is a series of cmdline
parameters i.e.
root=/dev/hda1 s
or whatever.
It works. I want to add another parameter:
kernel=<path>
so you can pick a kernel to boot.
But I need to pick an in-kernel linux-boots-linux that works on 2.4.x.
and can load and boot arbitrary kernel images (i.e. .gz, etc.)
Don't have one yet ... or do I? (eric?)
This will nicely allow us to boot arbitrary drives, partitions, file
system types, and even kernels.
Doing the open of (5,1) (i.e. /dev/console) is a real good deal. Whatever
you set as console is used -- serial, graphics, whatever. Things like
backspace work.
The patch is trivial, I will post it to the list as soon as it is cleaned
up. It's about 20 lines.
ron
