On Mon, 13 Apr 1998, Ken Nakata wrote:

> On Sun, 12 Apr 1998 21:40:31 -0500 (CDT),
> "David A. Gatwood" <marsmail@globegate.utm.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > So how exactly do they get away with distributing the Mach Kernel,
> > precompiled, with that in there?  It can definitely read from HFS
> > partitions, since the pre-DR3 installer boots off of an HFS partition
> > (i.e. the mach_servers, bootstrap.conf... stuff that'd normally be on
> > the MkLinux partition is on an HFS partition for the installer).
> 
> I think you should ask OSF about that (your inquiry may trigger a
> panicky run for their attornies, haha).
> 
> Seriously, though, they could put an hfs lkm in the miniroot, and load
> it during the boot before installation, couldn't they?

It's in the Mach Kernel part, which doesn't actually use a miniroot.  The
Booter INIT runs the Mach Kernel, which gets data on the hardware and then
loads the default_pager and the vmlinux server from the root partition as
specified in the lilo.conf file (the lilo.conf file is read by the Booter
while still in MacOS).  Normally that's a MkLinux partition, but when
using the RedHat installer (pre-DR3), that root partition is an HFS
partition.  The vmlinux *server* (the installer itself) has a miniroot,
but by this time, the Mach Kernel has already loaded the vmlinux server
from an HFS partition.


Tres Bizarre.
David

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