I have a few (read: a bunch) of questions regarding LinuxBIOS. Please bear with me.
I’m trying to get a clear sequence of events relating to a LinuxBIOS facilitated boot primarily on x86 hardware (because that is what I am most familiar with). Once the machine is powered on something reads whatever is in the “BIOS” flash space and begins executing it. In this case it is LinuxBIOS’s code to get into 32-bit protected mode and then initialize the required hardware (i.e. DRAM, PCI controller, etc.). Then, the process continues on with a Linux kernel (also stored in the flash/DoC). This is about where I lose track of what is going on…. Is the kernel that was just loaded going to function as the kernel in the system once booted? If so how difficult is it to upgrade the kernel in the field? If not (and the kernel in the flash is used to “chain load” a second kernel) isn’t that a bunch of extra work for nothing? Was there ever a boot loader like lilo or grub? Is there any way of choosing between various kernels at boot? If the “BIOS” flash/DoC was sufficiently large could it store an entire minimal system (with a NFS mounted /usr and such)? What is the purpose of using a DoC as apposed to a “classic” flash device? What is/are the bottleneck(s) in regards to boot speed? Will LinuxBIOS play nicely with ACPI once implemented properly in kernel 2.6 (or 3.0 as the case might be)? Thanks for all the help. I’m _very_ interested in LinuxBIOS for embedded uses. I would really like to help where I can (i.e. user documentation and advocacy). --adam -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net
