Eric W. Biederman wrote: > We also need to talk about releases and version numbers. The code is > getting to a point that I can seriously talk about a stable, supported > release. And having a print statement that displays the version of > LinuxBIOS you are running looks very useful in a production kind of > setting. Something line you get with uname -a or the initial linux > kernel version banner.
Its going to take me a bit to get back up to speed on linuxbios and there may be things I'm missing, but here is an observation: The bios code itself seems to be getting pretty good. However, the bits around the edges such as kernel patches and elf stuff is quite chaotic. Kernel patches are not maintained in useful chunks such as IDE spin up. I had hopes of using an elfimage with a built in ramdisk image (with romfs) or something like that, but inspite of recent postings for elf patches and the like, I haven't figured out where to begin or how it works. What do I do with a kernel that has the latest patch applied to it? How do I use it. Please don't take this as bitching. However, since its been about a year since I last worked on linuxbios I have a bit of an outsiders view again and I see some things that keep this from going prime-time in any way. Unless someone is feeling suffciently bored to organize elf image support and kernel patches, I will probably just get my stuff updated but do it the way I had been which was to have the bios load a compressed ram disk and have the bios uncompress the kernel and jump to it the same as was done a year ago. If anyone is interested in knowing about some places linuxbios has been, it went into the WTC in NY on about Oct 12 and the following days. The iRobot Packbot (see http://www.irobot.com) is the project I am working on. It contains a custom PC running linux booted with linuxbios. We didn't find any survivors, but several Packbots where among the robots sent into places where people didn't want to go. Cheers! Ty -- Tyson D Sawyer iRobot Corporation Senior Systems Engineer Military Systems Division [EMAIL PROTECTED] Robots for the Real World 603-532-6900 ext 206 http://www.irobot.com
