On Sun, Jul 01, 2007 at 11:33:46PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> In short: is it possible to get grub to directly boot an amd64 kernel
> without going through the chainloader?
> 
> 
> 
> Here's why I need to do that.
> 
> I'm trying to test a kernel to which I've added LSI SAS support to the
> mpt driver.  This is on hardware to which I have remote console and
> power, but no direct access.  The hardware has 8GB RAM, and therefore
> cannot boot an i386 kernel.  It already has the grub that comes with
> Solaris installed.  (Its a Sun x4200.)
> 
> I don't have access to the DHCP server, nor to the server where the grub
> menu.lst file is loaded.  I do however have root access to other
> machines on the same subnet, so I can set up an alternate TFTP or NFS
> server (not DHCP!)
> 
> As far as I know, there are no physical removable storage, and in fact
> the only mass storage on the system is the mpt-connected SAS drives
> (which I need my newly modified driver to access!)
> 
> I do have access to the local ufs filesystem, which has Solaris
> installed on it.
> 
> What I'd love to be able to do is something like:
> 
> grub> root (hd0,0,a)
> grub> kernel /netbsd
> (or kernel --type=netbsd /netbsd)
> 
> grub> boot
> 
> The problem is that the kernel command doesn't seem to like amd64 files.
> 
> Is there something I can do to work around this, without having to ask
> someone to change hardware around for me?

An i386 kernel should work on a box with 8G, it just will see only
about 3Gb. It may not be what you expect, but it should be a solution
to start working on the patches :)

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--