Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> writes:
>  > IMHO it's impractical to duplicate all features of GNU GRUB in every
>  > bootloader. I mean support for 4 filesystems, filename completion,
>  > forthcoming netboot support, forthcoming IsaPNP support (if I don't
>  > upgrade my AWE64 before that :-))
> 
> NetBSD's bootloader supports a large number of filesystems, too:
> 
> 	FFS
> 	LFS
> 	ISO-9660
> ...EXT2FS would be easy, and MSDOSFS is probably not far off.

Actually, i've done an MSDOSFS (FAT-12 and FAT-16 only, though) for a
separate framework that's largely compatible with libsa (i lifted the
libsa FFS code for use with it, with minor mods, so... 8-), that
should be made freely available before too long...

and don't forget USTAR "fs" support, as well as things like gziped
binary support, and all those wonderful network load methods (do TFTP
and NFS count as "file systems")?  8-)


>  > Can anybody give me a fresh kernel? I mean it should be compiled with the
>  > latest tools and contain the Elf Note section. Sorry, I cannot afford 
>  > trashing my NetBSD installation right now.
> 
> NetBSD kernels don't have the note sections in them.  Only userland binaries.

Further, it's not obvious why you'd even want them in the kernel,
since things like the load addresses are communicated nicely via the
ELF headers.

Actually, maybe i can imagine that you'd want notes there to provide
firmware/bootloader information that's not in the executable headers,
but I can't think of anything like that off-hand...



cgd
-- 
Chris Demetriou - cgd@netbsd.org - http://www.netbsd.org/People/Pages/cgd.html
Disclaimer: Not speaking for NetBSD, just expressing my own opinion.