Re: Multiboot(8) command-line format/parsing

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 02:33:42PM +0100, Grégoire Sutre wrote:
> Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> 
> >But GRUB legacy and Xen provide a first argument with the intention of
> >it being skipped e.g. by Linux.
> 
> Ok, since GRUB legacy implicitly puts the booted file as first
> argument in the multiboot command line, multiboot-compliant kernels
> that do not care about this information simply skip it.  But the
> multiboot specification does not require this.  So the question
> remains: how do these kernels behave, or should behave, when this
> first implicit argument is not there?

So basically, the spec is broken. Not really surprising given everything
else in it. Basically, with GRUB legacy you could either do something
sane with the first argument, if you are interested in the booted
kernel. NetBSD falls into this category. Or you silently drop it. Xen is
doing something similar for modules, which is annoying. Making the whole
thing optional now is making this even worse. I guess this falls into
the "Linux doesn't care, so why do this properly" category...

Joerg